Hello Everyone,
Great to read about diverse experiences. Following are a couple of our current activities related to a mobile phones so far to strengthen community health.
1. Trace, track and treat Pregnancy/delivery services using whatsapp group/mobile phone
- We have been using the mobile phone as an informal channel of communication for the past 2 years to TRACK and REFER pregnant women/high-risk pregnancies from primary care/village to secondary and tertiary care centres.
- We have created a WhatsApp group for each block/taluk (approximately population 0.5 million. There are 5 WhatsApp groups i.e one group per block. In each group, there are 150-200 community health workers in the group who keep referring while mentioning their phone number, age, the status of health and place of referral/post-delivery status.
- At the tertiary care centre there is a small team (3 members work on a rotation basis 24hrs) who facilitate further treatment once the patient reaches the tertiary care centre without delay and they update WhatsApp on the outcome of the patient/pregnancy status.
- The peripheral health workers document the outcome of their patient details. The patient/attendant is also kept informed of the phone number of the tertiary care centre team phone numbers to seek any relevant information to hasten the process of delivery
- Average 300-400 deliveries referred from periphery per month from each block/taluk and more than 1200 deliveries per month are tracked through this approach.
- We created these groups with a primary intention of coordinating/seamless, real-time information flow to avert maternal morbidity/mortality.
2. Mobile phones and Non-communicable diseases screening
We also initiated 3 years back, the screening of non-communicable diseases using mobile phones.
Please refer to the video for a quick snapshot picture of the work we do.
Non-communicable disease screening process and technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8ALUu1laLU&t=3s
Health worker screening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4ZLCkf3lI
Training video in mobile phone/ includes local language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lQfdwKgLdw&list=PL1oDScR6d4qIdnKeyn8ksY...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qODU37LL_10&list=PL1oDScR6d4qLhJw0sVunGD...
We adopted a package to screen non-communicable diseases such as Diabetes, Hypertension, Anaemia, refractive errors and malnutrition. Our barefoot community nurses. Local village women of 12th std education; previously unemployed are trained to develop specific SKILLS to screen the NCDs at the household level in each of the villages, capturing data such as Height, Weight, BMI, Blood Pressure, Haemoglobin, Urine to screen protein for Chronic kidney disease, Blood Sugar;
LIVELIHOOD: The above services are delivered at the doorstep by trained BFNs at affordable prices such as INR 15 for BP, INR 25 for blood sugar, Haemoglobin-INR 40 weight INR 2, Vision-INR 30. This amount goes to barefoot nurses and making the program self-sustainable.
Following are the key features of the initiative
1) Accessible: Screening non-communicable diseases in once neighbourhood and pre-empt burden of NCDs; 2) Affordable: the costs of tests are affordable to rural and remote populations; 3) Livelihood option; It takes care of livelihood for the barefoot nurse while providing preventive health care services;4) Technology: Smartphone enabled solutions for easy workflow, data capture- automation and; The data from the field will be used to guide the local government. 5) Community partnerships. We have been working every day to deepen our understanding of the communities in which we operate. We’ve been building networks of community-based organizations and integrating community members into our co-design process to ensure we’re providing the health services that members need most.
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Dr Sathyanarayana
Director-Health Innovations Lab
Indian Institute of Public Health-Bangalore Campus,
Epidemic DIsease Hospital Premises, Old Madras Road,
Behind Vivekananda Metro Station
Public Health Foundation of India
Ph:91-9535450999
Email:drsathya1@gmail.com
"Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress." - Mahatma Gandhi
"The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number of People"
HIFA profile: Sathyanarayana is a senior lecturer at the Public Health Foundation of India. Professional interests include ICT in health system development. drsathya1 AT gmail.com
