The Manthan Project

This four-year, $4 million initiative—funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—aims to improve the health of the mothers and newborns in Northern India. Uttar Pradesh, a northern Indian state, has the highest percentage of maternal and neonatal deaths in India. Launched in November 2009, the project provides technical assistance to the Department of Family Welfare, Government of Uttar Pradesh (GoUP) to implement evidence based maternal and newborn health (MNH) interventions during antenatal, delivery and the immediate postpartum period, and the first twenty-eight days of life.

The Department of Family Welfare, GoUP has helped the project identify two districts—Jhansi and Bahraich—to demonstrate and disseminate how to bring evidence based maternal and neonatal health interventions to scale in Uttar Pradesh; the results and experiences of which are likely to serve as a basis for future resource allocation to maternal and neonatal health programs in Uttar Pradesh.

The project’s activities span three inter-related components:

• Plan: Work collaboratively with the State Government and other stakeholders to strengthen maternal and neonatal health participatory planning and implementation processes that lead to increase in coverage of evidence based maternal and neonatal health interventions in public and private sectors. 
• Demonstrate: Demonstrate and document operational strategies that expand coverage of evidence based maternal and neonatal health interventions in the two districts, Jhansi and Bahraich. 
• Advocate: Advocate at district, state and national levels to promote widespread adoption and scale up of evidence based maternal and neonatal health interventions and operational strategies based on existing evidence as well as evidence generated through experience in two districts.

The Manthan Project consortium partners are PATH and Population Council. While PATH is providing support in the advocacy efforts for scaling up of interventions at state and national level, Population Council is contributing to the monitoring, learning and evaluation of the project.

For more information, please read our Manthan Project brochure.

Contact:
Amod Kumar
Project Director
B-6/314, Vineet Khand, Gomti Nagar,
Lucknow-226010. India
infomanthan@intrahealth.org