Improving mother and child health – Khushi Baby

BACKGROUND

Initially one of the 2017 winners of the Global South eHealth Observatory, the Khushi Baby programme received additional funding from the Fondation Pierre Fabre in 2019 to support a new implementation phase in the Indian State of Rajasthan.

Introduced in 2014 by the Indian NGO of the same name, Khushi Baby was designed to increase child immunisation rates among India’s poorest populations by providing “last-mile” service. The project is based on a simple, inexpensive solution to ensure medical monitoring of children in rural areas where communities are not adequately aware of the importance of immunisation and the care available to them in local health centres. In this country, each year, 500,000 children under the age of five die from diseases that could have been prevented by vaccination.

AN ECONOMICAL INNOVATION

Khushi Baby is an eHealth innovation based on storing medical information inside an NFC chip, itself inserted in a pendant worn by children. The child’s medical record is updated over the course of medical visits and can be accessed by social workers and health workers using a mobile application. The data is also aggregated on a platform to allow monitoring by health authorities.

The device is wholly designed to fit with the local context: low cost (less than a dollar to produce), waterproof, does not require a battery, and uses a black cord similar to that of the necklaces that babies in India already regularly wear.

SCALING IN RAJASTHAN

The project began in the State of Rajasthan in north-west India and was supported by the Fondation Pierre Fabre in 2017 for its first roll-out phase in 350 villages, reaching 25,000 children. In 2019, the Global South eHealth Observatory granted Khushi Baby additional support to extend the solution to the district of Udaipur where, by 2022, it should cover a total of nearly 1,000 villages and reach 600,000 patients.

In May 2020, Khushi Baby was chosen as a leading platform by Rajasthan’s health authorities for a three-year period. It was used as part of the Covid-19 prevention plan and for monitoring tuberculosis cases. A partnership was also signed between the NGO and Google AI for Social Good to assess the quality of the data collected.