On a January morning in Ranchi, three institutions — government, industry, and international philanthropy — joined hands to extend a decade-old promise to four million people living at the margins of India's health system. The MANSI+ program, built on proven reductions in neonatal and infant mortality across Jharkhand and Odisha, will now reach 5,000 villages in the Kolhan region over five years. At its heart is a quiet conviction: that a trained woman in her own village, trusted by her neighbors, can be the difference between a child's first breath and last. The agreement is a wager that what
NHM, Tata Steel, AIF Launch MANSI+ to Expand Maternal Care Across Jharkhand
The program addresses preventable maternal and neonatal deaths affecting vulnerable tribal populations, with documented reductions in mortality rates from previous implementation phases.
They are filling the gap that exists when no one is there to help
Mark
Why does a program like this need three organizations? Why not just the government?
Mimi
Because the government alone hasn't solved this problem. The National Health Mission has the mandate and the reach, but it's stretched thin. Tata Steel brings sustained funding and the ability to hire supervisors and trainers. AIF brings experience scaling health programs in other countries. Together, they can do what none could alone.
Mark
You mentioned Sahiyyas. Who are they, really?
Mimi
They're women from the villages themselves—mothers, often, who know their neighbors and are trusted by them. They're not nurses or doctors. They're trained to recognize when a pregnant woman needs to go to a hospital, how to keep a newborn warm, when a child's fever is dangerous. They're the last mile.
Mark
The numbers are striking—41 to 46 percent reductions in neonatal mortality. How does that happen?
Mimi
Mostly through prevention and early intervention. A woman who receives basic prenatal care is less likely to have complications. A newborn who is kept warm and breastfed properly is less likely to die from infection or hypothermia. These aren't miraculous interventions. They're simple things that don't happen when there's no one there to teach them.
Mark
Four million people over five years. That's a massive scale-up from what came before.
Mimi
It is. The earlier phases covered maybe 1,700 villages. Now they're talking about 5,000. The risk is that quality suffers when you grow that fast. The opportunity is that if it works, you've created a model that could be replicated across India.
Mark
What about the social norms piece—early marriage, teenage pregnancy?
Mimi
Those are upstream problems. You can train all the Sahiyyas you want, but if girls are married at fourteen and pregnant at fifteen, you're fighting biology and culture at the same time. The program recognizes that maternal mortality isn't just a medical problem. It's a social one.
Mark
What could go wrong?
Mimi
Turnover of Sahiyyas. Burnout. Government commitment wavering when there's a change in administration. The private partners losing interest if the metrics don't improve fast enough. And the hardest thing: sustaining quality supervision across 5,000 villages when the supervisors themselves are overworked.
The Pulse
- Thousands of tribal families in Jharkhand's most remote villages have long faced pregnancy and childbirth without any skilled support nearby — a silence that has cost countless lives.
- MANSI+ enters this gap with urgency, targeting 38 developmental blocks and four million people across three districts where maternal and neonatal mortality remain stubbornly high.
- Frontline health workers called Sahiyyas — women embedded in their own communities — are being trained to recognize danger signs, support safe deliveries, and treat childhood illness before it turns fatal.
- The program widens its scope beyond birth itself, taking on early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and birth spacing through community-led campaigns designed to shift deeply rooted social norms.
- The three-way partnership between the National Health Mission, Tata Steel Foundation, and American India Foundation must now prove that a model that worked at smaller scale can hold across 5,000 villages over five demanding years.
On a January morning in Ranchi, three institutions — government, industry, and international philanthropy — joined hands to extend a decade-old promise to four million people living at the margins of India's health system. The MANSI+ program, built on proven reductions in neonatal and infant mortality across Jharkhand and Odisha, will now reach 5,000 villages in the Kolhan region over five years. At its heart is a quiet conviction: that a trained woman in her own village, trusted by her neighbors, can be the difference between a child's first breath and last. The agreement is a wager that what works in one corner of a vast and unequal country can be carried, carefully, into the next.
Three organizations gathered in Ranchi in January to formalize an expansion of MANSI+, a maternal and neonatal health program that has spent a decade demonstrating what is possible in rural India. The National Health Mission, Tata Steel Foundation, and American India Foundation signed an agreement to bring the program to the entire Kolhan region — 38 developmental blocks across three districts — reaching roughly four million people, most of them tribal and economically vulnerable, over five years.
The program's credibility rests on documented results. A pilot in Seraikela block between 2009 and 2014 reduced neonatal deaths by 46 percent and infant deaths by 39 percent. When the model expanded to twelve more blocks, the outcomes held — and in some measures improved. These numbers represent not statistics but children who survived because their mothers received timely care and their newborns were met with the right interventions at the right moment.
The engine of MANSI+ is the Sahiyya — an Accredited Social Health Activist who lives among the families she serves. These frontline workers are trained in home-based care for pregnant women, safe delivery support, and early recognition of danger signs in newborns. They do not replace doctors; they fill the void that exists when the nearest clinic is hours away and a newborn's breathing changes at three in the morning.
The enhanced program also looks beyond birth. It adopts a life-cycle approach, addressing adolescent health, early marriage, and birth spacing through behavioral change campaigns rooted in the community rather than imposed from outside. Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committees will be strengthened, and teachers and nutrition workers will be drawn into a broader support network.
The partnership itself is part of the story. Public-private collaborations in rural health are hard to sustain — they demand that government share authority, that foundations accept slow and uneven progress, and that communities extend trust. That MANSI has endured and grown for ten years suggests these three organizations have learned something about working together. The explicit goal now is a 50 percent reduction in preventable maternal and neonatal deaths across the region. Whether the model can hold across a geography this large, and whether the partnerships can outlast the initial momentum, is the question the next five years will answer.
Three organizations signed an agreement on a January morning in Ranchi to expand a maternal health program across one of India's poorest regions. The National Health Mission, Tata Steel Foundation, and American India Foundation formalized their partnership to roll out MANSI+, an enhanced version of a decade-old initiative that has already demonstrated its ability to save lives in rural Jharkhand and Odisha.
MANSI+ is built on proven results. The original program, piloted in Seraikela block between 2009 and 2014, reduced neonatal deaths by 46 percent, infant deaths by 39 percent, and deaths among children under five by 43.6 percent. When the program expanded to twelve additional blocks over the next five years, the outcomes held: neonatal mortality fell 41 percent, infant mortality 43 percent, and under-five mortality 47 percent. These are not marginal improvements. They represent thousands of children who lived because their mothers received better care during pregnancy and birth, and because newborns got the right interventions at the right moment.
Now the three partners are betting they can replicate and extend that success across the Kolhan region—all 38 developmental blocks spanning East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum, and Seraikela districts. Over five years, from June 2021 through May 2026, the program will reach approximately four million people, most of them tribal and economically vulnerable. The scale is ambitious: 5,000 villages where there was previously no systematic maternal health support.
The engine of MANSI+ is deceptively simple. It empowers frontline health workers called Sahiyyas—Accredited Social Health Activists who live in their own villages and serve as the bridge between families and the public health system. These women receive training in low-cost, community-centered interventions: how to care for pregnant women at home, how to support safe delivery, how to recognize danger signs in newborns, how to treat common childhood illnesses before they become fatal. They are not replacing doctors. They are filling the gap that exists when a woman in a remote village has no one to turn to at three in the morning when her newborn stops breathing normally.
The new version, MANSI+, expands the lens beyond just mothers and newborns. It adopts what the partners call a life-cycle approach, meaning it tracks health from adolescence through early childhood. The program will work to shift social norms around early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and birth spacing—not through lectures, but through community-led behavioral change campaigns. It will strengthen Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committees, the local institutions that are supposed to oversee health in their areas but often lack resources and training. It will train not just health workers but also teachers and nutrition workers, creating a broader web of support.
The partnership itself matters. Public-private collaborations in rural health are notoriously difficult to sustain. They require government agencies to share authority, private foundations to accept slower timelines and messier outcomes, and communities to trust outsiders. That MANSI has survived and grown for a decade suggests the model works—or at least that these three organizations have learned how to work together. Tata Steel brings resources and institutional staying power. The American India Foundation brings international experience and technical expertise. The National Health Mission brings the government's reach and legitimacy.
The goal is explicit: reduce preventable maternal and neonatal deaths by 50 percent from baseline across the region. If the program achieves even half of what the earlier phases accomplished, it will save thousands of lives. The question now is whether success in one region can be replicated across a much larger, more complex geography—and whether the partnerships can hold when the initial enthusiasm fades and the real work of training, supervising, and sustaining frontline workers across 5,000 villages begins.
Notable Quotes
MANSI has emerged as a good, collaborative programme in achieving the SDG goals. We are happy to extend this partnership towards taking ahead MANSI+ across Kolhan district.— Bidyanand Sharma Pankaj, Additional Mission Director, National Health Mission
MANSI+ is the consequence of more than a decade of persistent effort which has yielded benchmark reductions in infant and maternal mortality rates while building a stellar public private partnership model.— Sourav Roy, Chief, Corporate Social Responsibility, Tata Steel
Want the full story?
Read the original at Devdiscourse ↗
General News