The Minimum Activities for Mothers and Newborns (MAMAN) Framework

The Minimum Activities for Mothers and Newborns (MAMAN) framework was developed as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Bureau for Global Health (GH), Office of Health, Infectious Diseases, and Nutrition (HIDN), the CORE Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Working Group, the Child Survival Technical Support Project plus (CSTS+), other USAID-funded projects and PVO headquarters and field staff.

The MAMAN framework reflects current thinking in maternal and newborn health and aims to reinforce existing programs and guide new PVO/NGO programming,with as final goal to enable mothers and their newborns to access high-quality MNC services.

MAMAN is based on the Essential Maternal and Newborn Care Interventions and comprises the basic minimum high-impact MNC interventions that PVOs/NGOs/NGOs can and are encouraged to implement within a health project, such as one funded by the Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CSHGP). PVOs/NGOs/NGOs and partners are encouraged to phase in all other of the essential interventions - incorporated in the MAMAN document under "context specific" and "other essential" interventions - beginning with the minimum package.

The MAMAN framework comes with a core set of indicators to track and report on the progress of the minimum package of maternal and newborn interventions. USAID does not expect annual reporting on these indicators, but encourages projects to ensure that these indicators are part of project monitoring systems.

We hope that the MAMAN framework as illustrated below will provide more consistency across programs leading to a greater program impact on reducing mortality.

To keep the MAMAN document alive and responsive to your needs, to share comments and any (electronic) translated copies, or if you have any questions about MAMAN, please contact Michel Pacqué of CSTS+, at email address, michel.c.pacque@macrointernational.com.