Tata Steel Foundation (TSF), in collaboration with HSBC, will provide electric scooters to women frontline healthcare workers in rural areas for easy and quick access of maternal and neonatal care in remote areas of Kolhan region in Jharkhand.

Informing about the initiative, Tata Steel’s corporate social responsibility chief Sourav Roy said: “TSF in collaboration with HSBC will give out 565 electric scooters to sahiya sathis and selected auxiliary nurse midwifery (ANMs) in three districts — West Singhbhum, East Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan — of the Kolhan region.

“If we get a good response, we would try to expand the project gradually, in association with National Health Mission (NHM) Jharkhand, to other blocks having problems in maternal and neonatal care.”

Accredited Social Health Activists (Ashas) are popularly referred to as sahiyas while sahiya sathis supervise the work done by sahiyas. Both sahiya sathis and ANMs are vital for the success of medical interventions for pregnant and lactating women and newborn children.

“The distribution would be done on March 13 at Seraikela, March 20 at Chaibasa (West Singhbhum) and March 27 in Jamshedpur (East Singhbhum). We are also setting up charging centres at public health centres (PHCs), nodal points of sahiya sathis and also at Sadar Hospitals. Based on need we might try to increase the number of charging points.

“Though it can be charged at home too and each scooter will cover 85km after one charge. We had done the mapping of sahiya sathis’ requirement and found that in a day their travel requirement is less than 85km,” informed Sourav.

Each scooter is priced at Rs 75,000 and would have GPS installed for tracking while TSF would also be providing helmets with each scooter.

“We have already done training of ANMs and sahiya sathis on use of the e-scooters before distribution,” said Roy.

TSF had been conducting maternal and neonatal survival initiatives (MANSI) in Kolhan region for the last few years.

MANSI is the empowerment of sahiyas who are trained in pre-validated, low-cost and community centric health interventions to provide appropriate interventions to pregnant women and newborn children. This is followed by onsite handholding, supportive supervision and robust MIS.

MANSI seeks to reduce preventable maternal, newborn and under-five-year-old child mortality by 50 per cent (from baseline) and improve health outcomes in adolescents and young children in the continuum of care by strengthening the capacity of the government frontline workers ASHAs, ANMs, AWWs and school teachers, to deliver quality home-based care, empowering adolescents and targeting critical issues in the community related to maternal health and newborn mortality.