https://journalarjass.com/index.php/ARJASS <p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Asian Research Journal of Arts &amp; Social Sciences (ISSN: 2456-4761)</strong> aims to publish high quality papers (<a href="/index.php/ARJASS/general-guideline-for-authors">Click here for Types of paper</a>) in all areas of Arts, Humanities and Social sciences.&nbsp;By not excluding papers based on novelty, this journal facilitates the research and wishes to publish papers as long as they are technically correct and scientifically motivated. The journal also encourages the submission of useful reports of negative results. This is a quality controlled, OPEN peer-reviewed, open-access INTERNATIONAL journal.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">This is an open-access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.</p> SCIENCEDOMAIN international en-US Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences 2456-4761 https://journalarjass.com/index.php/ARJASS/article/view/918 <p>Maternal and child health service utilisation remains an important concern in efforts to reduce &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;preventable morbidity and mortality among children under five in Tanzania. This qualitative study explored the social and cultural dimensions at the household level that shape the use of maternal and child &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;health care services in Makete District, Tanzania. The study involved 20 adult female caretakers of children under five years from Bulongwa and Utanziwa villages. Sixteen participants took part in in-depth &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;interviews, while four participated in informal conversations. The study was informed by sociocultural theory, which supported attention to the meanings, interpretations, and experiences through which caretakers understood maternal and child health services. The findings showed that clinic attendance was viewed by many caretakers as beneficial for monitoring child health and detecting early signs of illness. However, short birth intervals, agricultural work demands, and stigma associated with child illness sometimes contributed to delayed or incomplete clinic attendance. Caretakers generally recognised the value of vaccines, but experiences of pain, swelling, and fear of adverse effects contributed to vaccine hesitancy among some participants. Trust in biomedical services encouraged service use, whereas perceived limitations of these services led some caretakers to rely on traditional healing. The study concludes that maternal and child health interventions should consider caregivers’ local meanings and lived experiences to strengthen service utilisation.</p> Basili Sikanyika Patrick Masanja Copyright (c) 2026 Author(s). The licensee is the journal publisher. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 2026-06-29 2026-06-29 24 7 1 9 10.9734/arjass/2026/v24i7918