Mother and Child care just an SMS away

New Delhi, Jan 18 (IANS) A beep on your mobile phone tells you that your two-year-old is due for a flu shot, or even reminds you that you have completed six months of your pregnancy and need to go for a scheduled check-up. All this and more might come true with the union health ministry's new 'Kilkari' scheme on mother and child care in August.

"Messages will be sent on the mobile phones of the woman or her husband or some other close relative," C.K. Mishra, additional secretary in the health ministry, told IANS.

For pregnant women, messages would include reminders about routine check-ups, blood tests, tetanus vaccinations and a host of other things.

"Women would also be given tips on a healthy pregnancy like food items to be eaten and avoided and what kinds of exercise they can undertake," he said.

Young mothers would be sent alerts on the vaccination schedule, age and weight ratio of the child and tips on what to feed the child at what age.

The government also plans to expand the scheme to include adolescent girls in the future.

"Tips on how to combat anaemia and on personal hygiene would be part of this," Mishra added.

At the beginning, messages would be sent in six languages -- four north Indian and two south Indian. "Later more languages can be added as the programme expands."

"The SMS alerts would be appropriate to the stage of pregnancy or the age of the child," Mishra explained, adding, "There will be nothing general about the alerts."

A total of 78 specific messages have been identified as of now and more will be added.

He said that all stakeholders - like doctors, midwives, state health officials and service providers - are in the loop and technical issues are being worked out.

"The only problem we are facing is organising a proper database, a job which would be done by the ground level workers of the state governments," he said.

The project is inspired by a similar programme being run in Chhattisgarh under which the state government has provided computer tablets to nearly 380 auxiliary nurses and midwives.

The tablet-based information system enables quick and accurate reporting. The system has turned out to be extremely beneficial as it helps in collection of health information about an entire family under one umbrella, based on which effective steps can be taken to improve their health parameters.

Despite major progress in some other fields, India has lagged behind as far as maternal and child health indicators are concerned.

According to the UNICEF, approximately two million children under-five die in India every year due to malnutrition and diseases. This represents about one-fourth of the global burden of infant and child deaths.

Adding to this is maternal mortality in India with over 100,000 dying every year during childbirth - almost one-fourth of the world's maternal deaths.

According to the UN Millennium Development Goals, India faces the challenge of reducing infant mortality from 53 per 1,000 live births to less than 30, and maternal mortality from 254 per 100,000 to less than 100.