Mobiles Beep Health Messages to Women in India's Villages

"In just 15 months' time we have got 35,000 subscriptions, including 11,000 for pregnancy-related alerts and 8,000 for immunisation alerts. So, you can see how well it is being accepted by the people," said Qurashi.

An NGO, BBC Media Action, has introduced similar applications in eight districts of Bihar. Their Mobile Kunji and Mobile Academy are being widely used by community health workers in Bihar for women and child healthcare.

"Since 70 percent of the population has access to mobile phones we thought of utilising the phones to deliver timely and appropriate information," Siddarth Swarup of BBC Media Action told IANS.

Under Mobile Kunji, the specific healthcare needs of the woman and girl child is looked after through an interactive voice message.

"The interactive audio helps in providing credibility to what the health workers are saying. We have tied up with six operators, hence it's toll free. We have given 38,512 Mobile Kunjis to health workers," added Swarup.

Mobile Academy is a training course application for the health workers, ASHAs and aganwadi workers on safe delivery measures, health and sanitation.

Health workers have to pay 50 paise per minute for using Mobile Academy. On completion of the course the health worker is given a certificate from the government, Priyanka Dutt, project director of BBC Media Action, told IANS.

There is another application called Project Leapfrog to address the needs of tea growers of the Nilgiri hills in south India.

The Adivasi Tea Leaf Marketing (ATLM), a self-help group, buys tea leaves from the adivasi growers and sells it in the market.

"Project Leapfrog helps make the process of buying and selling tea leaves more transparent. The real time data on the transactions can be easily accessed by the growers on their mobile phone," said Ramshreyas Rao of ACOR who developed the application. ACOR works in tandem with ATLM to provide the data on mobile phones to adivasi growers.

These innovative applications were awarded 1 million each at the Vodafone Foundation Mobile for Good Awards.

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