Government of India has several initiatives to provide financial and medical support to all pregnant women including women belonging to economically weaker sections during their pregnancy and delivery in Government hospitals. These include:

Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a demand promotion and conditional cash transfer scheme for promoting institutional delivery. The details of the scheme can be seen at the link given below: https://nhm.gov.in/index1.php?lang=1&level=3&lid=309&sublinkid=84

Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakaram (JSSK) entitles every pregnant woman to free delivery, including for caesarean section, in public health institutions along with the provision of free transport, diagnostics, medicines, other consumables, diet and blood. The Government of India has taken various steps to ensure assured availability of all facilities to pregnant women near their homes, especially at the time of delivery in the remote areas of the country including rural areas of Uttarakhand and Bundelkhand region as given in the Annexure.

Government of India has not received any complaints for cases of negligence in pregnant women during their delivery in Government hospitals.

The Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar stated this in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

Annexure

Steps taken by Govt. of India to ensure assured availability of all facilities to pregnant women near their homes, especially at the time of delivery in the remote areas of the country are as follows:

Over 25,000 ‘Delivery Points’ across the country have been strengthened in terms of infrastructure, equipment, and trained manpower for provision of comprehensive RMNCAH+A services Setting up of Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Wings at high caseload facilities to improve the quality of care provided to mothers and children.

Functionalization of First Referral Units (FRUs) by ensuring manpower, blood storage units, referral linkages etc.

Operationalisation of 102 services for pregnant women for providing free transport from home to facility, inter facility transfer in case of referral and drop back to home.

Birth Waiting Homes (BWH) have been established in remote and tribal areas to promote institutional delivery and improve access to healthcare facilities

Surakshit Matratva Ashwasan (SUMAN) for providing assured, dignified, respectful and quality healthcare at no cost and zero tolerance for denial of services for every woman and newborn visiting the public health facility to end all preventable maternal and newborn deaths.

Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan (PMSMA) provides pregnant women a fixed day, free of cost assured and quality Antenatal Care on the 9th day of every month.

Obstetric High Dependency Unit (HDU) & Intensive care unit (ICU)- Setting up of Obstetric HDU/ICU in the high case load tertiary care facilities across country to handle complicated pregnancies.

LaQshya (Labour room Quality improvement Initiative) to improve the quality of care in Labour room and Maternity operation theatres to ensure that pregnant women receive respectful and quality care during delivery and immediate post-partum.

Monthly Village Health, Sanitation and Nutrition Day (VHSND) is an outreach activity for provision of maternal and child care including nutrition.

Information, education and communication (IEC) to promote institutional deliveries.

Birth Microplanning and Birth Preparedness by Skilled birth attendance (SBA) trained ANMs.

MCP Card and Safe Motherhood Booklet are distributed to the pregnant women for educating them on diet, rest, danger signs of pregnancy, benefit schemes and institutional deliveries.

Outreach camps are provisioned for improving the reach of health care services especially in tribal and hard to reach areas. This platform is used to increase the awareness for the Maternal & Child health services, community mobilization as well as to track high risk pregnancies.