Janani Suraksha Yojana

Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) is a safe motherhood intervention under the National Health Mission launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 2005.
It is being implemented with the objective of reducing maternal and neonatal mortality by promoting institutional delivery among pregnant women especially with weak socio-economic status i.e. women from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and BPL households..
JSY integrates cash assistance with delivery and post-delivery care.
The scheme is under implementation in all states and Union Territories (UTs), with a special focus on Low Performing States (LPS).
Cash assistance: Under the JSY, eligible pregnant women are entitled for cash assistance irrespective of the age of mother and number of children for giving birth in a government or accredited private health facility.
BPL pregnant women, who prefer to deliver at home, are entitled to a cash assistance of Rs 500 per delivery regardless of age of women and the number of children. The rationale is that the beneficiary would be able to use the cash assistance for her care during delivery or to meet incidental expenses of delivery.

Focus: The scheme focuses on the poor pregnant woman with special dispensation for States having low institutional delivery rates namely the States of Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan, Orissa and Jammu and Kashmir. While these States have been named as Low Performing States (LPS), the remaining States have been named as High performing States (HPS).
The Yojana enables the States/UTs to hire the services of a private specialist to conduct Caesarean Section or for the management of Obstetric complications, in the Public Health facilities, where Government specialists are not in place.
States are encouraged to accredit private health facilities for increasing the choice of delivery care institutions.

An international team of researchers has found that the money given under the Janani Suraksha Yojana is less than the total expenses of facility-based childbirth, in terms of both monetary and real costs.
They have also found that less than 50 per cent of eligible women take advantage of the scheme due to poor infrastructure at the hospitals.
Instead of monetary benefits, the use of maternal healthcare facilities is largely driven by the grass-root level community health workers known as ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activists), researchers said.
The researchers recommended that it is of utmost importance to address critical gaps around quality of care at the public primary healthcare facilities.

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