Project Name: Mobile Sakhi
Organisation: Lata Medical Research Foundation & CommCare
Project Location & Coverage Area: Nagpur, Maharashtra
Project URL: http://latamedicalresearchfoundation.org/
Area of intervention: Health
The Mobile-SAKHI application is a Maternal and Child Health app that enables tracking women in their third trimester of pregnancy till 6 months of infant age. Mobile Sakhi is a collaborative effort of Lata Medical Research Foundation and CommCare that aims to collect data, monitor and evaluate antenatal and postnatal care and infant nutrition up to 6 months in a rural setting of Central India. Along with Baby Friendly Hospital initiative (BFHi), the project promotes appropriate breastfeeding practices and timely initiation of complementary feeding, child growth and reduce morbidity in infants. This application has been designed to collect data, provide visit reminders for improving compliance, play audio files in regional language so that health worker and mother can understand the questions and health messages for desired behavior change in, pregnancy spacing, maternal diet, early iron and folic acid supplementation, immunization and appropriate IYCF practices.
This project entails early identification of any maternal or infant illnesses, their causes and care received from the health facility; health messages for mothers to improve breastfeeding practices, nutrition, family planning, gender equality etc. The application was designed and was deployed on Nokia C2-01 J2ME phones in Marathi language. The visit schedule comprises of eight visits by the ASHA worker at the following time points: Two visits in the antenatal period (third trimester of pregnancy), one visit
within 24 hours of delivery, subsequent post natal visits at 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 and 6 months.
The application is divided into four modules, namely, 1) Mother Registration 2) Maternal Information 3) Child Registration and 4) Child Information. These modules were created to minimize any confusion while data collection. Tele-counselling is provided by locational counsellors (LCs) with a diploma in nursing, trained by authorized trainers. The beneficiaries receive short messages in local language to promote breast feeding, improve compliance and scheduled weekly calls.
Reach & Road Ahead
A population of 3,12,43,350 of which 1,036 women are registered in this project from the slum around Central Avenue, Itwari, Mahal and Sitabuldi areas of Nagpur city. LMRF’s Mobile Sakhi trial began in Takalghat, Nagpur district and registered 80 pairs of mothers and infants in both a CommCare cluster and a control cluster, respectively. LMRF has plan to scale up the Mobile SAKHI Project to all primary health centers in Takalghat, equipping each of the FLWs with a mobile tool. The organization is also looking forward to slowly and systematically rolling out this programme for their ongoing Maternal and Newborn Health (MNH) Registry. Amidst these plans to scale, LMRF also hopes to continually leverage the CommCare platform by adding health videos for improving delivery of IMNCI services in the villages.