Strategies That Can Help In Improving Maternal And Child Health In India

According to the statistics given by the World Health Organization(WHO), almost 45,000 women died from avoidable pre-pregnancy related problems in India in the year 2015. Adolescent girls and rural women are the ones at a higher risk. Lack of well-trained and qualified midwives in rural areas is one of the major reasons behind these deaths. To improve these conditions, the state government has been taking preventive measures and implementing programs to encourage the women to deliver at the medical centers. Still, there is a limited shred of evidence available on the effectiveness of such interventions. This is estimated from the results drawn on the findings from impact calculations of the two state government programs, the Thayi Bhagya Yojana(TBY) in Karnataka and the Chiranjeevi Yojana(CY) in Gujarat, that are aimed at improving the maternal health, mainly amongst women who are living below the poverty line. This step was taken in the early 2000s in response to high maternal mortality due to these factors. Major Findings

• Most health providers in the state of Karnataka, TBY mentioned that there was no clear understanding of the programs or how the incentives worked.
• The programs did not rise the overall rates of institutional delivery, nor did they improve child health and maternal health.
• TBY, however, contributed to a noteworthy decline in cesarean rates.
• CY did not reduce out-of-pocket expenses for pregnant women. This is not surprising, given that the Indian District Level Household Survey 2007-2008 estimates the cost for institutional delivery at around for INR1,935, compared with the INR1, 600 provided under CY. TBY contributed to a small reduction of less than INR200 in hospital expenditure per pregnant woman.

Tips for future research and maternal health practice and problems The CY and the TBY programs saw low take-up by women and families, regardless of a few advantages concurred in the plans. There is a need to comprehend what factors added to low take-up and how programs should be intended to address this challenge. Neither one of the programs concentrated on the nature of care offered at the clinics. Parallel endeavors to enhance the quality of people in general medicinal services framework are required. Imitating the achievement and re-mediating the low take-up of such maternal wellbeing projects will additionally rely on creating minimal effort, simple to-execute systems to screen the straightforward use of these plans. Let's work towards making it healthy India with necessary measures and initiatives. Source: Reliefweb.int Report