Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Janani Suraksha Yojana

1.     The JananiSurakshaYojana (JSY) — conditional cash transfer scheme to encourage women for institutional deliveries — appears to have led to a huge increase in the proportion of women choosing institutional delivery.

2.    however, it has substantially deflected attention from what happens to women who do not or cannot reach hospitals. There is also inadequate assessment of the capacity of hospitals to handle this large volume of cases, and whether providers actually manage to provide skilled attention to women who need emergency obstetric care. The issues were raised by participants of a seminar ‘Chronicles of Deaths Foretold — Using Maternal Death Reviews to prevent Maternal Mortality and Morbidity in India’ in the Capital recently.

3.  Discussing the Maternal Death Reviews from Rajasthan, U.P., Jharkhand and Gujarat, JashodharaDasgupta of National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights (NAMHHR) said a common factor in all the reports above is that most of the women approached institutions during labour (as encouraged by the government through JSY) and most of these deaths could have been prevented if adequate skilled medical attention had been provided.

4.   It was also pointed out that while JSY was popular, there was lack of awareness about the JananiShishuSurakshaKaryakram that entitled pregnant women to free delivery and the mother and new born babies to free treatment and food in public health institutions up to a month in addition to free pick up and drop from home to the health facility and back or to a referral hospital as the case may be. Even the staff was unaware of the scheme in the hospitals, thereby depriving the women of this entitlement.

5.    Poor tribal women showed that many had died of malaria or hepatitis or severe anaemia that could not be prevented only by hospital care during childbirth

6.    Haemorrhage is one of the main causes of maternal death followed by unsafe abortion, severe anaemia, sickle cell disease, hypertension, sepsis, hepatitis and malaria. Lack of transport or delay in arranging for transport has also resulted in women dying en route to a health facility.

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