FOGSI Signs MoU with NABH to Collaborate on Improving Maternal Healthcare Quality Standards in India

By: WE Staff | Tuesday, 30 August 2022

The National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH)/Quality Council of India (QCI), India's apex body for accreditation and quality promotion, and the Federation of Obstetricians and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI), India's professional organisation representing practitioners of obstetrics and gynaecology, announced their partnership to advance the Government's vision to improve the quality of maternity services. By working together, NABH and FOGSI will be able to review maternity service providers (MSPs) under the umbrella of "One Nation, One Standard."

This is an essential sectoral collaboration for quality improvement aimed at strengthening health systems for safer birthing in India and lowering maternal mortality in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Clinical standards will be evaluated under the MoU, guaranteeing consistent, safe, and respectful treatment for mothers during and after childbirth, in hospitals and nursing homes with maternal care facilities. This partnership will advance and standardise quality across all MCH institutions in the nation, marking a significant development in India's expanding healthcare system.

For the purpose of developing a pool of FOGSI professionals to evaluate facilities for NABH quality accreditation and assessments of MSPs by NABH in accordance with FOGSI's Manyata standards, this collaboration will encompass quality care awareness seminars for Maternity Service Providers (MSPs).

Despite the fact that 88.6% of deliveries in institutions took place in India in 2019–2021 (NFHS 5), the nation has one of the highest rates of maternal fatalities worldwide. In reality, a sizeable fraction of maternal deaths are attributable to avoidable factors such obstetric haemorrhage, infections during pregnancy, and hypertensive disorders during pregnancy. The Government of India has made excellent maternity care a higher priority by implementing quality improvement programmes in public health institutions in order to solve this. However, the private sector is crucial in ensuring that women receive high-quality maternal care because a sizeable portion of women choose private care for delivery. This emphasises the requirement for a government framework to monitor the standard of maternity care provided by private providers and therefore enhance maternal health outcomes.

The Manyata initiative, which promotes the adoption and application of 16 clinical standards based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) standards of quality care for prenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum care, has been run by FOGSI since 2013 to close this gap. According to programme evidence from Ariadne Labs (affiliated with Harvard), Manyata institutions are now 70% more capable of managing life-threatening problems such obstructed labour, pre-eclampsia and/or eclampsia, and postpartum haemorrhage. The geographic reach of Manyata's network of 1500 sites in the nation includes 22 states. This groundbreaking programme establishes a standard for high-quality care for mothers by enhancing the skills of the healthcare workers and offering certification.

Manyata has set the stage for facilities to become self-driven in their awareness of and demand for quality improvement, and with this collaboration, they hope to scale with NABH. As part of its sustainability and scale-up strategy, the initiative is fostering innovation through social health entrepreneurs and institutional business models. It might be implemented in countries with comparable socioeconomic demographics and integrated healthcare systems.

As a result, the sectoral partnership between NABH and FOGSI has the potential to transform the maternal health ecosystem by enhancing one another's efforts to reach more women and have a bigger impact.