New Delhi: India has joined eight other countries under a World Health Organisation initiative to improve the quality of maternal and newborn healthcare services, the Lok Sabha was informed.

The WHO and other partners had launched the Quality of Care (QoC) Improvement Network around birth in February in Malawi.

"This network of partners and 9 'first wave' countries - Bangladesh, India and seven countries from Africa - made a commitment for improving QoC around birth," Minister of State Faggan Singh Kulaste said in a written reply.

He said the participants from India including government nominees deliberated on a roadmap to improve the QoC for maternal and newborn health in India with the partners of the network.

The partners include the WHO, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UNICEF among others.

He said the network advocates bettering the quality of care through alignment of National Quality Assurance System with the WHO QoC guidelines in order "to improve maternal and newborn health and piloting the district implementation model in selected states and districts".

It also enables quality assurance teams at healthcare facilities to monitor and implement the QoC measures using the PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycle.

It aims to bring in a culture of quality at the healthcare facilities to promote positive and sustainable health outcomes, he said.

"Learnings from these pilots are to be documented for probable scale-up under the National Quality Assurance programme," the Minister said.