mMitra

12 Aug

MLC VANGUARD | Created by ARMMAN

mMitra is a free mobile voice call service that sends timed and targeted preventive care information through automated calls during pregnancy and infancy directly to the phones of the enrolled women in their chosen language and timeslot. It is one of only five scaled maternal messaging programs in the world and has reached 2.47 million women.

Website

2,474,256 Lives Impacted

The primary target group for mMitra is pregnant women and mothers with children up to the age of one, most of whom either belong to the unorganized sector (earning less than $5 per day) or have no direct source of income.

mMitra (along with another program) was evaluated through a UKAID (DFID)-supported randomized cluster trial (RCT) in 250 villages in Maharashtra, with significant improvements in knowledge and health outcomes: 25% increase in the number of pregnant women who took IFA tablets for 90 or more days;47.7% increase in proportion of women who knew at least three methods of family planning; 17.4% increase in proportion of infants who tripled their birth weight at the end of one year; 26.3% increase in proportion of infants under six months who were exclusively breastfed.

An external evaluation report on the RCT noted an enhanced understanding and awareness of preventive health care and regular monitoring check-ups; and satisfaction and uptake of mMitra calls among beneficiaries. In a pre-post intervention study on mMitra, 96% women sought treatment for complications during pregnancy as opposed to 72% in the baseline study.

The Innovation

One of the factors responsible for India’s poor maternal and child health is lack of access to preventive care information and services during pregnancy and infancy leading to poor understanding of danger signs and delayed care seeking. mMitra improves information access by leveraging mobile technology and the existing infrastructure and health worker network of the government, health facilities and partner NGOs.

Salient Features:

141 Messages (60-120 seconds)
Timed & Targeted Frequency: Biweekly/Weekly Missed Call System
Choice of time slot and language (Available in 4 Languages)
9 Attempts For Each Message Call Centre Support
Women are enrolled via two verticals:
Hospital-Health workers posted in antenatal/postnatal clinics of government/private hospitals register women during their first check-up.
Community-Enrollment in slums is done by community NGOs whose female health workers ‘Sakhis’ are trained and financially incentivized to give information and register women.
Since 2013, mMitra has reached 2.47 million women across nine states through partnerships with 97 hospitals and 40 NGOs. It is a sandbox for testing innovations which will be scaled via other programs.

About ARMMAN

ARMMAN is an India-based non-profit leveraging mHealth to create cost-effective, scalable, gender-sensitive, non-linear, systemic solutions to improve access of pregnant women and mothers to preventive information and services along with training health workers to reduce maternal and child mortality/morbidity. It adopts a “tech plus touch” approach by leveraging the health worker network of the government and partner NGOs along with the deep mobile penetration. Programs implemented by ARMMAN have reached 24 million women & children and trained 187,000 health workers in 17 states. It is implementing the largest maternal messaging program (Kilkari) and the largest mobile-based training program for frontline health workers in the world (Mobile Academy) in partnership with the Health Ministry.