Healthy Mother Wellness & Care (Healthy Mother), the pioneer in introducing evidence-based scientific midwifery care in India, announced today the formation of The Healthy Mother Foundation, a non-profit trust with the mission to address the lack of affordable, accessible, and high quality maternal and newborn care in urban slums in India.
Healthy Mother Co-founder and Director, Krishnan Sakotai said, "The healthcare system in India, especially in maternal and newborn care, has the highest disparities among different sections of the population. We are seeing that as the country races ahead along the path of economic growth, metros and Tier 1 cities are facing tremendous challenges from urban migration, lack of affordable housing and most importantly, absence of accessible, affordable and high quality healthcare at the bottom of the pyramid. Expecting and new mothers in urban slums have to deal with a medical system which is highly opaque, impersonal, questionable in quality and unaffordable. As a result, many mothers choose not to go in for regular prenatal checkups until the last moment, or when an emergency strikes. In addition, the 75% cesarean rates, most of them unnecessary, place tremendous burden on mothers from a health and financial perspective. Despite crores of rupees being allocated towards this area at the policy making level of the central and state governments, there is very little to show at the ground level."