Tata Steel’s Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (Mansi) project in Seraikela block is touching lives of several village women. In last five years, the project has helped build women health workers known as Sahiyas, who are delivering better results. Due to the efforts of sahiyas and Tata Steel Rural Development Society (TSRDS), there’s been a 32.7 per cent reduction in neonatal mortality and a 26.5 per cent reduction in infant mortality in the region.
When Tata Steel decided to embark on the Mansi initiative under the auspices of Tata Steel Rural Development Society, the infant mortality rate (IMR) or the number of children dying within a year of birth in Seraikela was 60 per 1,000 live births. Also high was the neonatal mortality rate (NMR) or the number of infants dying within 28 days of birth.
In comparison, Kerala and Goa had IMRs of 12 and 11 respectively. The reasons for Seraikela’s poor performance in community health were many. The terrain is inhospitable — there are places the administration does not visit for months. Government health systems are either defunct, too far away or cost is too much to visit.
Mansi is a unique project — a multi- collaborative association between the Jharkhand Government, Tata Steel, funding agency America India Foundation (AIF), Gadchiroli-based NGO Search, and the community — specifically formed to reduce infant and maternal mortality rates in Seraikela. “We realised that the Government health system was not making any impact. Doctors were not there, facilities were not enough and often far from the village. Besides, transport was not available to reach health centres quickly,” says Biren Bhuta, chief of CSR, Tata Steel.
“We were clear from the start that we would not run a project parallel to the Government. Rather, we would use the existing Government machinery to deliver a social benefit. We found a good model in the home-based neo natal care model implemented through Search, an NGO run by Dr Abhay and Dr Rani Bang in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. This model was based on training the women health workers chosen by the Government to deliver home-based care to pregnant women and newborns.”
Tata Steel decided to implement Mansi on a scale where it could see real impact. “Instead of 10 villages, we decided to take up an entire block — the administrative block of Seraikela consisting of 167 villages with a population of 80,000,” says Bhuta. The first step was to find out what were the prime causes of infant and maternal deaths. For this, Tata Steel decided to follow the Total Quality Management or TQM approach. “Our surveys revealed Trained under Project Mansi, sahiyas extend care to mothers and newborns that 96 per cent of deaths happened in the neonatal stage. We realised that is the stage we need to focus on,” says Dr PC Mohapatra, head of family initiatives and health at Tata Steel.