The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) project of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), was set up by the Federal Government of Nigeria to reduce maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality inthe country. MCH initiative is a follow-up program to Midwives Service Scheme, implemented by the Nigeria National Primary Health Care Development Agency, that provides demand and supply side incentives, community monitoring, and increased human resources to improve the rates and quality of antenatal care and skilled birth attendance in Nigeria. On the supply-side, SURE-P aims to recruit, train and deploy 5,400 midwives and 14,100 community health extension workers, as well as to upgrade essential infrastructures and guarantee the adequate provision of supplies and equipment to primary health centres between the end of 2012 and 2015. In addition SURE-P will hire and train a total of 38,700 village health workers, who are expected to establish the connection between the primary healthcare centres (PHC) and pregnant women in each village. On the demand-side, SURE-P introduces a CCT, whereby all pregnant women will be given a total cash payout of 5,000 Naira (about USD 32), conditional on attending antenatal care, skilled birth attendance and postnatal care. Also, an information campaign aims to target all women of reproductive age to encourage them to register with their nearest PHC. The rigorous impact evaluation is being implemented to determine the causal impact of this programme. The IE comprises a quasi-experimental impact evaluation whose aim is to evaluate the SURE-P package, and four experimental evaluations which will evaluate the impact that distinct components have within the SURE-P package, such as: the effect of alternative incentives regimes to midwives on their retention rates the effect of conditional cash transfers on utilization of MCH services the effect of community monitoring of essential commodities on incidence of stock-out of supplies at the PHC The baseline data collection was carried out in September-November 2013. The first follow-up survey will be implemented in November 2014 January 2015, after SURE-P Phase I implementation. The final data collection is planned one year later, from November 2015 to January 2016, after SURE-P Phase II implementation. To gather baseline data four different groups of respondents were interviewed using different questionnaires. These respondents were: Managers in all 500 SURE-P health facilities across the country Midwives recruited by SURE-P Women who gave birth three months preceding the survey, in sampled households in each SURE-P facility catchment area Ward Development Committee (WDC) chairpersons or representatives in all SURE-P facilities. Overall, 476 facility manager questionnaires, 1,291 midwife questionnaires, 2,378 household qustionnaires and 477 WDC questionnaires were administered. The baseline data is documented here.
