Recorded presentation

Leila Caleb Varkey, ScD¹, Anurag Mishra, PhD², M. E. Khan, PhD¹, and John W. Townsend, PhD³. (1) Population Council, Sanga Rachana, 53 Lodi Estate, New selhi 110003, India, New Delhi, 110003, India, 91-11-24610913, mekhan@pcindia.org, (2) FRONTIERS, Population Council, New Delhi, 53 Lodi Estate, New Delhi, New DELHI, 110003, India, (3) Frontiers in Reproductive Health, Population Council, 4301 Connecticut Ave., N.W, Suite 280, Washington, DC 20008

Men have traditionally been excluded from maternity services in India. However the Men in Maternity project, an operations research study conducted demonstrated the success of involving husbands in their wives prenatal care, and to a limited extent in postnatal care in the Delhi at the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation’s (ESIC) clinics as part of the intervention that integrated family planning and STI preventive activities into maternity counseling given to couples. Other results showed that men and women in the intervention group reported higher levels of spousal communication (84% vs. 64%) and use of family planning methods at 6 months postpartum (59% vs. 45%) compared to the control group and increased condom use in the postpartum period (32% vs. 23%). These results prompted the ESIC to scale –up these activities to all their clinics in Delhi in a phased manner in 2003. From an original three clinics, where 12 providers from each clinic were trained the scale up required training 9 master trainers who have now trained 152 doctors and nurses and oriented all the staff at 10 by the end of the year. This paper documents the key results of the MiM Study, and lessons learned. It then describes the first phase of scaling-up process encouraging male involvement in maternity care and plans for the second phase, which will involve hospital, based care sites as well.

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