Improving Maternal and Neonatal Health in Pakistan

Pakistan has one of the highest maternal and neonatal mortality rates in the world. A six-year USAID funded project aiming to reduce Pakistan’s maternal and neonatal mortality was implemented in ten districts throughout Pakistan. This project, named PAIMAN (Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns) designed a full spectrum of interventions necessary to address mother and newborn health. Overall, PAIMAN interventions were designed into two basic categories: 1) communication and behavior change interventions that were focused on household and community health behaviors and 2) system strengthening designed to meet the healthcare needs of the communities, primarily through the public health system.

This paper will use a multi level cluster random sample of 9,541 women of reproductive age in the baseline survey and of 12,497 women in the endline survey to measure the effect of the PAIMAN interventions on the knowledge, attitudes and behavior of women regarding maternal and neonatal health. The difference between the two shows the overall increase in each maternal and neonatal health indicator during the PAIMAN project period. The logistic regression results show that the women who were exposed to at least two PAIMAN interventions had a significantly higher chance of having their last baby delivered by a skilled birth attendant (OR=3.09) , which is used as a proxy to the reduction in maternal deaths.

Thus the findings support that the PAIMAN interventions were successful and they can be replicated to the other similar settings as well as they can be adopted by the public sector maternal and neonatal healthcare providers for a sustainable impact.