Global Health Bridge is empowering Community Health Workers in rural India with a cell phone-based tool (Maternal Health Reporter) that will help them easily record and monitor health information, receive critical reminders for upcoming prenatal visits, and generate reminders to mothers about nutrition and care throughout their pregnancy. These interventions will facilitate early recognition of pregnancy complications, saving lives of mothers and newborns.
In India, 1 in 70 women die during pregnancy or childbirth; 75% of these deaths are preventable with timely intervention, but <50% of women receive the recommended 4 prenatal visits. Community health workers (CHWs) are often the sole source of healthcare in rural communities, but the average ratio of CHWs to patients is 1:1000. As such, CHWs struggle to keep track of patients using paper-based records or their memories, resulting in missed prenatal visits and subsequent complications at birth.
Global Health Bridge transforms the cell phones of CHWs into indispensable medical tools that can record health information via a simple, interactive voice response system. Based on pre-established clinical protocols, this platform not only stores patient data for easy access, but also sends a customized series of text message reminders to CHWs and patients for critical follow-up visits throughout their pregnancy--resulting in regular visits and essential, timely interventions.
The initial stage of this project will empower CHWs with the tools they need to benefit over 1,000 pregnant women in rural India--and that's just the beginning. Global Health Bridge believes that if CHWs are provided with better health reporting tools in rural areas, their compliance with WHO-recommended prenatal visits will increase dramatically, and the number of complications or deaths related to childbirth will decline. This will lead to lower medical costs, and healthier mothers and babies.
For forty years, we have been recording information about pregnant mothers in our notebooks, but these records were often lost. Now we finally have something better -- it's like magic.
- Pushpa, Community Health Worker in Rural India
Total Funding Received to Date: $13,753
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $36,247
Total Funding Goal: $50,000
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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