Information Delivery through Mobiles for

Child and Maternal Health Care

Rajiv TikooDirector, OneWorld South Asia

Information Delivery through Mobilesfor

Child and Maternal Health Care

OneWorld South Asia

OneWorld Network

� Empowering discourses on development and human rights

� Global attainment of human rights as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

� The South Asia Regional Centre translates this vision into actionable initiatives for sustainable development and the realisation of the Millennium Development Goalsin the region through

� Knowledge-led empowerment, inclusion for rights entitlements

� Governance delivery at grassroots

The OneWorld network anchored at 12 centres serves as knowledge enabler to audiences

worldwide across development issues through its

international web portals, regional editions

and thematic channels in 9 different

languages

Global Civil Society network working to leverage the democratic

potential of Information & Communication Technologies and the Internet

for:

Knowledge, Research and Emerging Media

•OneWorld South Asia and other group of portals

•Community Radio

•Governance Knowledge Centre

•Digital Opportunity Channel

Knowledge Services & Innovations @ Grassroots

•LifeLines India

•MGNREGS Info kiosks

•Mobile based apps for monitoring social sector programmes

•Mobile based Health Advisory Systems

•Web services for CBOs

OneWorld’s Focus Areas

Mobile-based monitoring of Sanitation

Behaviour

� To strengthen monitoring of the Total

Sanitation Campaign

� Mobile based application, integrating

GPS, text and images in regional

language

� Collection and transmission of data

directly from the households

� Technology: GPS, Mobile and Web

� Pilot in Rajgir, Bihar and Solan in HP

GPS GPRSWEB

Biometric-based ICT innovation in MGNREGA

� Enhance transparency and

accountability on ground by providing

information access

� E-enable all MGNREGA processes,

minimize intermediation

� Information access by neoliterates

� Touch Screen, Biometric Authentication

� GPS-based attendance

GPS WebHandHeldTouch ScreenBiometric GPRS

LifeLines India

�Advisory system to provide timely information to Farmers (LifeLines Agriculture)and Teachers (LifeLines Education)

�User calls – the query is recorded on IVRS

�The call is responded back in 24 hours by voice mode

� LifeLines Agriculture for farmers� LifeLines Education for Teachers

Telephony WEBIVRS

EkDuniya Web Services

� Enable the grassroots organisations to have their web presence - Web sites

� in English and local language: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla, Marathi, and now Sinhala

� 100+ sites/organisations

� Update on own

Web

Maternal and Child Health

� India, one of the six countries accounting for 50% of maternal deaths worldwide, has reduced the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR)*

� MMR of India is 2301

� MDG 5

� Most of the maternal deaths can be prevented.

� Most of them are due to lack of appropriate care during pregnancy and childbirth

� Lack of appropriate and timely information / advice is one of the key reasons – especially in rural scenario

•Source: Lancet; •1 – WHO 230

Child and Maternal Health Care System

� Mobile as the information delivery channel

� Provide critical maternal care advisory for pregnant women

� Local language� Contextualised and user friendly messages

� SMS� Cost-effective

Implementation overview

� Pilot started in May 2010

� Covers Kanpur Dehat district of Uttar Pradesh, India

� OneWorld, Microsoft and Datamation Foundation

� Awardee: Vodafone Mobile for Good 2011

Working of Maternal Care Advisory

� Volunteers visit the pregnant women in the villages and enroll the pregnant women in the advisory system through their mobile

� Mobile number and Expected Date of Delivery is recorded

� Registered user received a welcome message –confirming the registration

� Based on the EDD, periodic maternal care and advisory information are sent as SMS to the registered mobile –week and day based.

� Frequency – 2 SMS/ week

Conceptual framework

Working of Child Care Advisory

� Similar to maternal health care system� Date of Birth, Mode of Birth, Weight, Disease are recorded while registering

� Registered user received a welcome message –confirming the registration

� Based on the DoB, mode of birth and other parameters, health advisory, govt. schemes, vaccination advice –child developent are sent as SMS to the registered mobile

� Frequency – 2 SMS/ week

Typical advisory

� Specific RCH tests that need to be carried out by the pregnant and lactating women.

� Advice on breast-feeding, nutrition requirements, alerts on immunization schedules

Maternal Registration Form

Impact on:

� Pregnant women, and new mothers

� Community health workers

� Families of targeted women

� Health officials as part of National Rural Health Mission

Pregnant women, and new mothers

� Access to RCH customized messages tailormade as per their needs, apart from getting delivered at a time they need the information.

Community health workers

� Community Health workers affiliated with the National Rural Health Mission of the Government of India were able to provide relevant and timely health information to the targeted beneficiaries. In addition, they would be able to monitor the women far more effectively due to customized SMS messaging.

Families of targeted women

� The families of the targeted women have benefited due to improved and consistent health information made available to them in a customized form, which enabled them to take care of the targeted beneficiary in a better manner.

Health officials as part of National Rural Health Mission� Health officials who are primarily responsible for the health services delivery gain supplementary access to health messages as a result of this project.

Challenges

� Knowing the exact date of delivery

� Identifying pregnant women at their earlier stage

� Mobile phone is mostly with their husbands (advantage and disadvantage)

� Mobile numbers registered under “Do Not Disturb”

� Needs to be institutionalised, combined with other government schemes

� Providing timely, contextualised and custom information through mobile

� Local language – SMS based

� The system can be replicated for other similar services for other issues

Adaptation of the system

Next Step

� To create a customized generic solution based on the learning from the pilot experience that can be rolled out in all South Asian countries and even Africa

Thank You

rajiv.tikoo@oneworld.net