Social Issue

A woman dies in childbirth every twenty minutes in India; and for every woman who dies, 20 more suffer lifelong ailments. Two children under age five die every minute, while four out of ten children don’t realise their full potential due to chronic under-nutrition/stunting. A significant proportion of maternal deaths and 50-70% of child deaths are preventable. Regular monitoring visits with a health care provider during pregnancy and childhood help detect high-risk factors early, ensure prompt referral/appropriate treatment, and prevent life-threatening complications. 

However, women and children in underserved rural and tribal areas are hardest to reach through traditional health-care services due to difficult terrain, severe monsoons, extreme backwardness/illiteracy that precludes regular visits and access to appropriate timely care, thereby leading to maternal and infant mortality rates being higher than the national average. 

Our Response

ARMMAN is a non-profit organisation based in India that leverages mHealth to create cost-effective and scalable solutions to improve access to information and preventive services for pregnant women and mothers, as well as training health workers to reduce maternal and child mortality.

Netri has supported ARMMAN since 2020 by contributing to its mMitra programme and in 2022 and to its Kilkari and Mobile Academy programmes that leverage India’s high telecommunications penetration to improve maternal and child health outcomes. 

This donation will contribute to its Arogya Sakhi home-based antenatal and child care programme in the tribal district of Palghar in Maharashtra. 

The Arogya Sakhi home-based antenatal and child care programme is implemented in severely underserved tribal districts, where there is a extreme lack or non-existence of a primary health care system, coupled with inaccessible terrain.

Government frontline health workers (ASHAs) working in these districts receive training to become health leaders (Arogya Sakhis) providing antenatal and child home-based care (including interpersonal counselling supported through animations and voice calls), aided by a mobile-coded decision support algorithm that ensures early detection of high-risk factors and early referral and follow-up for better management of high-risk conditions during pregnancy and infancy.

Expected Social Impact

The target beneficiaries are pregnant women and mothers of children up to one year old, living in Jawhar Block of Palghar District, belonging to communities with low literacy and with poor health indicators.

This grant will fund the training of 12 ASHAs to become Arogya Sakhis, who are expected to care for 600 pregnant women and 600 infants over 1 year.