World’s Largest Digital Mass Education Program, IAP Healthphone, Launched By Govt. To Fight Malnutrition

Behind the shining ‘Make in India’ vision and investment of billions of dollars of venture capital fund; there lies another India which is malnourished, unhealthy and ignorant about health.

Do you know:

• 6 Crore children in India are under-weight (which is double that of Sub-Saharan Africa stats)
• 36% of Indian women are under-weight
• 56% of Indian women suffer from iron deficiency
• 50% of all child deaths in India are due to malnutrition
• India ranks 15^th amongst leading countries with serious malnutrition among 0-5 aged children
  (Source: 1, 2)

Information and education about nutritional facts and highlighting the importance of a strong diet for young mothers and children is the need of the hour. And sensing this gap, and requirement, Indian Govt. has launched World’s biggest digital mass education program to fight malnutrition and health in India.

Termed as IAP HealthPhone, this program has been launched by the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) in partnership with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, UNICEF. Vodafone India will help the mission by providing technological support for it’s vast scale, pan-India implementation.

Union Minister of Women and Child Development Smt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi officially launched this program yesterday in New Delhi, where she hoped and believed that this program will help to reach out women across every state of India, and unleash a new health revolution never experienced in the country.

The Plan for Mass Education

The mission behind this massive education program, powered by digital and mobile medium, is to educate and inform 60 lakh women and girls between the age of 13-65 about importance of nutrition and its impact on the overall welfare of the society.

And IAP will be using mobile and Internet to accomplish the same.

As per reports, IAP is aiming to cover 60 lakh+ women by 2018. Those women who are expecting a child and/or planning to conceive in the next 3 years are in the focus.

Here is an introduction to the program by Aamir Khan:

A strikingly impactful website: Poshan (which means nutrition) has been launched, which has 4 powerful videos about different aspects of nutrition and health. These videos have been created by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and UNICEF; and translated into 18 Indian languages.

The major part of the campaign would be to distribute and share these 4 videos as deep as possible, using a unique public-private partnership, aided by Vodafone.

These 4 videos address 4 specific topics, namely:

• Status of women in India
• Care of pregnant women & children under 2 years
• Breastfeeding and the importance of balanced diet and nutrition
• Simple, easy changes in daily habits which can have long term impact

Incentives for Watching Videos

One of the unique features of this biggest campaign India has witnessed is the Incentives Program. Vodafone will not only provide free data access for these videos on mobile, but also provide Rs 10 to every user who has watched all the 4 videos.

Vodafone is expected to send more than 300 million SMS to women across the country.

In future, IAP along with UNICEF will create a HealthPhone MicroSD card, loaded with similar educational videos, and provide them to all NGO’s and Women centric Govt. departments to distribute them among women mobile users in rural areas.

You can read the official Press Release by the Government here.