mMITRA PROJECT
Introduction:
Prayas is implementing mMitra project in Pune city, the project is supported by ARMAAN, Mumbai based organization. mMitra is a free mobile voice call service that provides culturally appropriate comprehensive information on preventive care and simple interventions to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity in urban areas. Through this project, pregnant and lactating women receive messages on antenatal and postnatal care. Medically verified, individualized voice messages of 60 - 90 seconds (145 messages in all) in Hindi or Marathi are sent directly to the mobile phones of each enrolled woman. The voice calls are in the local dialect, specific to the woman’s gestational age or age of infant and are sent weekly, free of cost directly to pregnant woman and mother with infants. The enrollment of eligible woman in the program is carried out by a trained ‘Sakhi’, identified by the organization. The intent of implementing the mMitra program is to communicate and to engage with pregnant women, and women with children under one year of age (women) on preventative care measures and about simple interventions to reduce maternal and infant mortality and morbidity.
Activities
Prayas is implementing mMitra project in Pune city since May 2016. We are working with Municipal corporation facilities and private/trust based hospitals from Pune city catering to urban poor women. Currently mMitra services are offered through 8 private and 14 PMC hospitals. We are reaching to approximately 2000 women every month through 30 Sakhis working on the project. Till date total 14000 women have been registered in the project.
Table 8: Data from May 2016 to March 2017
Private/Public sector |
Number of Facilities |
Number of women registered |
Private Sector |
8 |
6978 |
Pune Municipal Corporation |
14 |
4669 |
Total |
22 |
11647 |