Surakshit Matritva Aashwasan (SUMAN) Yojana

What is Surakshit Matritva Aashwasan (SUMAN)?

Surakshit Matritva Aashwasan (SUMAN) is an initiative of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, launched in October 2019, to assure dignified, respectful and quality healthcare at no cost, and with zero tolerance for denial of services; to every woman and newborn accessing a public health facility. SUMAN is not a cash scheme. It is a guarantee that brings together the free maternal and child health entitlements that already exist across government programmes and commits the health system to deliver them without any out-of-pocket expense.

According to the Ministry of Health, the goal is to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths by ensuring that a pregnant woman gets the full package of assured services: before, during and after childbirth, and that no one is turned away or charged for care that should be free.

Core promise

• Assured, free and quality maternal and newborn services.
• Zero expense to the beneficiary for the notified services.
• Zero tolerance for denial of services at the facility.

What services does SUMAN assure?

According to the SUMAN framework, the assured free services include:

• At least four antenatal check-ups, one check-up under the Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan, and six home-based newborn care visits.
• Iron-folic acid supplementation, tetanus-diphtheria injection and other routine antenatal care.
• Free and zero-expense institutional delivery, including caesarean section, with free drugs, diagnostics, diet and blood as required.
• Free transport; from home to the facility, referral between facilities, and drop-back home after delivery.
• Free treatment of sick newborns, including care of sick newborns and infants up to 30 days at public facilities.
• Early initiation and support for breastfeeding.
• Identification and management of high-risk pregnancies, with tracking and follow up.
• Respectful care with privacy and dignity, and a facility-level grievance mechanism.

Coverage runs through pregnancy, delivery and up to six months after delivery for the mother, and covers the newborn as described above.

Who is eligible for SUMAN?

Covered:

• Every pregnant woman accessing a public health facility.
• Every mother up to six months after delivery.
• Every sick newborn accessing a public health facility.

SUMAN is universal within the public health system. There is no income ceiling, no Below Poverty Line requirement, no caste or community condition, and no registration fee. Entitlement follows from being a pregnant woman, a recent mother or a newborn who comes to a designated government facility.

Where SUMAN does not apply:

• SUMAN is a public-health guarantee. It does not reimburse care taken at a private hospital of your own choice, and there is no cash payout to claim, so a person seeking a cash benefit or private-hospital reimbursement is not eligible under SUMAN. Financial support for institutional delivery is instead delivered through linked schemes such as Janani Suraksha Yojana and Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram, whose entitlements SUMAN brings together.

What documents are needed for SUMAN?

SUMAN is designed to be document-light so that care is never delayed. The Mother and Child Protection (MCP) card issued at antenatal registration helps the health worker track your check-ups and entitlements, and a government ID such as Aadhaar assists registration. But the "no denial" principle means services cannot be refused for want of a document.

How to apply for and access SUMAN services

1. Register your pregnancy early at the nearest public health facility — sub-centre, primary health centre, community health centre or district hospital; through the ASHA or ANM worker. You will receive an MCP card.
2. Attend the assured antenatal check-ups. Ask the ANM or medical officer for the SUMAN package. The four antenatal visits, the PMSMA check-up, IFA tablets and the TD injection: all free.
3. Use free referral transport (102/108) when it is time to travel to the facility for delivery.
4. Deliver at the public facility, where delivery, including caesarean, medicines, diagnostics and diet are free, with drop-back home afterwards.
5. Bring your newborn for care if the baby is sick; treatment of sick newborns up to 30 days is free at the facility.
6. If any assured service is refused or charged for, use the facility's grievance mechanism or call the national health helpline 104.

Because SUMAN is an assurance rather than an enrolment scheme, there is no form to fill and no waiting for approval, you access the services directly.

Help and grievance redressal

• National health helpline: 104
• Facility grievance mechanism: every SUMAN facility is expected to display a grievance channel and a citizens' charter of assured services.
• State maternal health helplines run in many states for referral and complaints.

SUMAN's guarantee is that these maternal and newborn services stay free. No public facility should charge you for a notified assured service, and no beneficiary should be turned away.

How to check your application status

SUMAN has no application form, so there is no application ID or status tracker to check in the usual sense. What you can and should check instead is whether your entitlements are actually being recorded and honoured. Use these channels:

• MCP card entries: at every antenatal visit, the ANM or medical officer should write the date, findings and services given (IFA tablets, TD injection, check-up) on your Mother and Child Protection card. If a visit happened but nothing is written down, ask the health worker to update it on the spot, this card is your own running record of what you are entitled to and what you have received.
• ANM or ASHA follow-up: your local ASHA worker or ANM is expected to track your pregnancy through the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) register and follow up on missed check-ups or home visits. Asking her directly is usually the fastest way to confirm your due antenatal visit or home-based newborn care visit.
• Facility citizen's charter: every SUMAN-designated facility is expected to display a charter listing the assured free services. If you are unsure whether a service you were charged for should have been free, check this charter or ask the facility's SUMAN nodal officer.
• National health helpline 104: call 104 to confirm whether a service is covered under SUMAN, to ask about your nearest designated facility, or to follow up on a complaint you have already raised. Keep the date and reference of any earlier call handy when you follow up.
• State maternal health helpline: several states run a parallel helpline or dashboard for maternal health grievances; the facility or district health office can tell you the number applicable in your state.

Because there is no central "SUMAN application number," status checking here really means confirming service delivery and holding the facility accountable to its own records, not tracking a file through an approval pipeline.

Common reasons for rejection

SUMAN cannot be "rejected" the way a scholarship or subsidy application can, since there is no form to approve or reject. What does happen in practice is that an assured free service gets refused, delayed or informally charged for. These are the real patterns and how to push back on each:

• A facility asks for informal payment for a "free" service. This is the single most common complaint under SUMAN, staff citing shortages of medicines, blood, diagnostic reagents or ambulance fuel to justify a charge. Fix: point to the facility's own citizen's charter listing the service as free, and if the staff still insist, escalate immediately through the facility grievance box or call 104 rather than paying and trying to claim it back later, since SUMAN has no reimbursement mechanism.
• You are turned away for lacking a document. Some facilities wrongly insist on an MCP card, Aadhaar or a referral slip before treating a pregnant woman or sick newborn. Fix: SUMAN's "zero denial" principle means care cannot be refused for want of paperwork; ask to speak to the medical officer in charge, and if refused, report it on 104, documents can be sorted out after care, not before.
• You are directed to a private facility for delivery or diagnostics. This sometimes happens when a public facility claims to lack capacity, staff or blood stock. Fix: ask for referral to another public facility with free 102/108 transport rather than a private one, since SUMAN's guarantee applies only within the public health system and a private-facility bill will not be covered or reimbursed.
• Newborn care beyond 30 days is refused as "not covered." SUMAN's assured free newborn treatment window is up to 30 days; sick infants older than that are sometimes wrongly told nothing is available. Fix: ask specifically about coverage under the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram, which continues free care for identified conditions beyond the newborn period, rather than accepting a flat refusal.
• A grievance raised at the facility gets no response. Facility-level complaint boxes are sometimes not monitored closely. Fix: if a facility-level complaint goes unanswered within a reasonable time, escalate to the district health office or the state maternal health helpline rather than repeating the same complaint at the same desk, and keep a note of dates and names involved for the escalation.

In every case, the practical remedy is the same: cite the specific assured service from the SUMAN charter, and escalate through 104 or the state helpline when the facility itself does not resolve the issue.