Putting Quality on the Global Health Agenda

Abstract

In 2005, after years of persistently high maternal mortality rates, India implemented Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a conditional cash-transfer program in which women were paid to deliver their babies in health care institutions. The program's effect was as profound as it was disappointing: although the rates of institutional deliveries soared, there was no detectable effect on the country's maternal mortality rate.¹