Summary

Program goals

The Government of Madhya Pradesh is attempting to address this vital obstacle in the way of providing timely healthcare services to pregnant women, sick infants, BPL families and other select patients through its Janani Express Yojana- a scheme that provides 24/7 emergency transport services to rural patients. It has the ultimate aim of increasing institutional deliveries in rural madhya pradesh. Efforts to strengthen maternal health care through JSY however, faced a major constraint in terms of effectively reaching out to pregnant mothers at the time of delivery. With the initiation of Janani Express Yojna (JEY), this challenge was addressed to a significant extent.

Key program components

This model is being operated by the Government of Madhya Pradesh and a number of contracted private ambulance providers with technical support from UNICEF. The model utilizes both existing government vehicles as well as private ambulances. All vehicles are equipped with mobile phones for contact and coordination. A number of districts offer special transport facilities for neonates. A 24/7 call centre is established at the district level to manage requests for emergency transport. This project was piloted in the Guna district by the district health society and UNICEF in 2007.

As of Jan 2010, 22,542 pregnant women were transported in the district, averaging about 750 women per month in 2009. This number is expected to increase with growing awareness. The project was initially scaled to 7 districts of Madhya Pradesh; current plans are to expand the initiative to 44 out of 50 districts of the state with support from UNICEF. Neonatal transport ambulance, equipped with a transport incubator, have been piloted in two blocks of Guna and Mandsaur and will be further scaled up to 6 districts. This program currently being operated by the Government of Madhya Pradesh; no incentives and penalties are yet planned. Monitoring is done by District Health Society and the Chief District Medical Officers are responsible for effective functioning of the project.

Future Goals:

1) The NHRM is planning to integrate referral transport services operating under different schemes into a common service facility. It aims at operating 101 ambulances under EMRI, 792 vehicles of JEY and almost 500 state government ambulances under a proposed referral transport service. Citizens through a common toll free number would access its facilities easily;

2) In order to address the challenge of effective monitoring of drivers and their response to emergency calls, the NHRM has taken the decision to install the GPS navigation system in ambulances.

3) The NHRM in collaboration with UNICEF is building an Online Monitoring System to improve the monitoring and evaluation of the fleet operations under JEY at the state, district and local level.