Providing a positive birthing experience to pregnant women must be the top priority for our Government and the society
Mother’s, the name acknowledges the love and dedication of mothers, who sacrifice greatly in raising their children and contributing to their families and communities. It is a time to acknowledge the important role that mothers play in shaping our lives and to express our appreciation for their unwavering support and encouragement. Children express love and appreciation through various gestures such as gifts, cards, and special meals, and spend quality time with mothers and mother figures.
Women have distinct nutritional requirements throughout their lives – especially before and during pregnancy and while breastfeeding when a nutritional vulnerability is greatest. Ensuring women have nutritious diets and adequate services and care is fundamental for the survival and well-being of mothers and their children. Before pregnancy, women need nutritious and safe diets to establish sufficient reserves for pregnancy. During pregnancy and breastfeeding, energy and nutrient needs increase. Meeting them is critical for women’s health and that of their child – in the womb and throughout early childhood. Pregnant Women are among the major target groups of POSHAN Abhiyaan - the government’s flagship programme to improve nutritional outcomes. To further draw attention to the nutritional needs of this group, the Government of India’s focus for the 5th Rashtriya Poshan Maah (September 01 to 30, 2022) has been on maternal and child health. This year, the objective was to trigger Poshan Maah through Gram Panchayats as Poshan Panchayats with a key focus on “Mahila aur Swasthya” and “Bacha aur Shiksha”.
To ensure a pregnancy without any financial woes, the Government has launched the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), a direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme under which cash benefits are provided to pregnant women in their bank account directly to meet enhanced nutritional needs and partially compensate for wage loss.
Providing a positive birthing experience to pregnant women has been made an imperative through programmes like Surakshit Matritva Anushasan (SUMAN), and Labour Room & Quality Improvement Initiative (LaQshya). SUMAN aims to provide assured, dignified and respectful delivery of quality healthcare services at no cost and zero tolerance of denial of services to any women and newborn visiting a public health facility to end all preventable maternal and newborn deaths and morbidities. This initiative has been built on the progress of schemes like Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK) and Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY).
LaQshya was launched to reduce maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity, improve the quality of care during delivery and the immediate post-partum period, and enhance the positive birthing experience along with providing Respectful Maternity Care to all pregnant women attending public health facilities. The programme is working on improving the quality of care for pregnant women in the labour room, maternity Operation Theatre and Obstetrics Intensive Care Units (ICUs) & High Dependency Units (HDUs).
Institutional deliveries in India have increased substantially from 79 per cent in 2015-16 to 89 per cent in 2019-20. Around 87% of births in rural areas and 94% of births in urban areas are institutional deliveries. The government is also taking various other steps to promote institutional deliveries, like, the operationalisation of Sub-Centres, Health Centres, Community Health Centres and District Hospitals for providing 24x7 basic and comprehensive obstetric care, and capacity building of healthcare providers in basic and comprehensive obstetric care to enable them to provide high-quality services during childbirth at the institutions. Other initiatives include setting up Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Wings at high caseload facilities to improve the quality of care provided to mothers and children, establishing Birth Waiting Homes (BWH) in remote and tribal areas to promote institutional delivery and improving access to healthcare facilities, and strengthening of over 25,000 ‘Delivery Points’ across the country in terms of infrastructure, equipment, and trained manpower. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare also launched the Anemia Mukt Bharat strategy in 2018 to reduce anaemia prevalence both due to nutritional and non-nutritional causes, in the lifecycle approach. The strategy is estimated to reach out to 450 million beneficiaries including 30 million pregnant women.
It is not just the responsibility of government, community health workers, NGOs, civil society but every citizen of the country must consider it as their duty to ensure Surakshit Matritva, and work towards zero preventable maternal deaths in India.
(Goyal is an eminent social scientist, columnist and Professor of DoHE, GoMP, and Khokhar is a Research Scholar)
