With assistance from UNICEF, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India has introduced an Android-based tablet application called Auxiliary Nurse Midwives Online (ANMOL). This app makes recording and tracking healthcare data easier and more efficient.
In India, there are 293,000 Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANM), according to UNICEF. They are village-level health workers and are the first point of contact between communities and health services in India.
Typically, ANMs serve 3,000 to 5,000 people each and their work consists of providing primary health care services, nutrition and immunization programs, as well as child health and family planning services.
One crucial aspect of their job is collecting and tracking healthcare data. This is often seen as a slow, time-consuming process since ANMs must enter the data into registers, which are eventually entered into a central server.
The time spent maintaining registries could easily be reduced, which is ANMOL’s main objective. Manually updating the information is also problematic, as there are risks of information being entered incorrectly, or too late.
The ANMOL app is a multifaceted mobile tablet-based application and offers a solution to improving data collection and the overall standards of child and maternal health service provision in India.
It makes the work of ANMs paperless, bringing them online and exponentially reduces the time it takes to enter healthcare data into the central database.
“[ANMs] are able to use the tablets to enter and update the service records of beneficiaries on real time basis, ensuring prompt data entry and updates,” stated a report by UNICEF.
“ANMOL is aimed at improving the quality, effectiveness and timeliness of the delivery of quality services, specifically to rural populations, to ensure better healthcare for women and children,” said Dr. Srihari Dutta, Health Specialist at UNICEF India.
The app brings awareness to rural populations and educates them on different healthcare initiatives.
India, the world’s second most populous country, will benefit greatly from such an application, which allows for rapid entry of millions of individuals’ health information.
According to Matters India, in addition to data collection, ANMOL complements the roles of ANMs as counselors by providing readily available information about newborns, pregnant women and mothers in their respective areas.
“Prevention and awareness about non-communicable diseases, which are largely linked to our way of living, dietary habits, and lack of exercise will go a long way in ensuring that the country remains healthy,” said Shri J.P. Nadda, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare.
On April 6, 2016, the Ministry of Health tweeted, “ANMOL App is Aadhaar enabled and will help in the authentication of records of field workers and beneficiaries. #digital health #TransformingIndia.”
– Michelle Simon
Photo: Flickr
2016 Women Deliver Conference: Advocating for Health
The 4th annual Women Deliver Conference, the largest conference in the world discussing women’s rights and issues, was held on May 16-19 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Women Deliver is an organization that advocates for women’s and girls’ health and well-being. The organization holds conferences and focuses on building partnerships, gaining new allies, and developing and sharing advocacy tools to help others participate in the cause.
Building on the success three previous Women Deliver Conferences, the Conference focuses this year on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) laid out by the United Nations. Specifically, the focus will be on women’s health issues and women’s and girls’ education and economic empowerment.
5,700 policymakers, researchers and advocates participated in what is being called the largest convention to discuss female rights in a decade. People from 2,000 organizations and 169 countries all convened in an effort to bring women and girls to the forefront of the SDGs. Among the participants were journalists, young people and representatives from both the private sector and UN agencies.
This is an important time to bring attention to the SDGs and make progress towards those goals.
In a blog for the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Daniela Ligiero, Vice President of the Girls and Women Strategy at the United Nations Foundation, explains why now is such an important time to take a real look at female rights.
One of these reasons is that it is important to revitalize the community’s energy in addressing women’s rights. As Dr. Ligiero points out in her blog, the biggest threat to the SDGs is the loss of momentum driving the impetus to find real strategies and solutions for approaching the very real problem of gender inequality around the world.
Additionally, the discussion of women’s rights cannot be limited to Goal 5 of the SDGs, which pertains to gender equality alone. Other goals of the SDGs that focus on education and on health issues must be included in the big picture in order to make real advances for women and girls as a whole.
The Conference provides scholarships for participants to travel to the event and has inspired a lot of participation, with over 5,000 applicants.
The biggest hope for the Women Deliver conference is to take the ambitious goals set forth for improving women’s and girls’ rights and create concrete strategies for accomplishing them.
– Katherine Hamblen
Photo: Flickr
Ghana Expands the LEAP Program
The Government of Ghana will be expanding the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty, or the LEAP program, which will provide cash grants to 216 districts in demand of basic needs.
The Government of Ghana has been focusing on poverty alleviation by accomplishing the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. One of these goals included introducing the National Social Protection Strategy, (NSPS).
The NSPS works to achieve government objectives by providing protections to people living in extreme poverty, susceptibility and marginalization. There are three main components to the strategy, which include: a grant scheme which provides secure incomes to vulnerable households, social protection programs and complimentary inputs for those that currently receive benefits from social protection programs.
Sprouting the NSPS, the LEAP program has flourished. Developed in 2008, the LEAP program is a cash transfer program that works to enable those disadvantaged and vulnerable populations living in extreme poverty throughout Ghana.
The Government of Ghana projects that the LEAP program will reach 216 districts by the end of the year. Currently, the program resides in 186 districts.
Mr. Eugene Nuamah, the Operations Office of the Ministry of Gender and Children, spoke in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Mr. Nuamah explained that farmers were particularly affected by a recent fire disaster. The farmers received money to replenish their destroyed crops under the Emergency LEAP Cash Transfer program.
The goal o the Emergency LEAP Cash Transfer program is to provide necessary grants, which address the needs of affected households. Mr. Nuamah also advised farmers to take fire precautions to avoid future crop destructions.
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture additionally works towards ensuring that farmers receive crop seeds to replenish their harvests as soon as possible. Some of the most demanded seeds are cocoa and plantain.
Since its introduction in 2008, the LEAP program has expanded its beneficiary households from 1,654 to 250,000. By the end of the 2016, the program projects that it will reach 350,000 household enrollments throughout Ghana.
The households that will be selected to enroll as beneficiaries to the LEAP program will be determined by a nationwide monitoring exercise. This strategy has been used in the past, as research showed that local economies of LEAP communities were thriving. Children were attending school at a higher rate and more people had access to health care.
In addition, the LEAP program has been modernizing its program through the introduction of electronic payments. The Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System allows beneficiaries to use online payment platforms to ensure greater control over the management of grant funds.
LEAP beneficiaries will have the chance to enroll for online payments. They will be available in all LEAP districts to replace the manual system of transferring cash grants, increasing the efficiency and security of cash transfers.
The LEAP program is administered by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and managed by the Department of Social Welfare.
– Kimber Kraus
Photo: Flickr
Providing Education to Displaced Children in Ecuador
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that shook Ecuador back in April left behind serious damages across the country. 120,000 displaced children were forced to leave school as they were uprooted and their schools were damaged.
“Education is a lifeline for children going through the trauma of chaos and destruction,” said Grant Leaity, UNICEF Representative in Ecuador. “It helps give them a daily routine and a sense of purpose and puts them on track for psychological recovery.”
To ensure children continue their education during this time, UNICEF is building temporary education centers. They are working to install fifty temporary spaces to hold classes in, and are giving out 700 “school in a box” kits. These kits come a variety of school supplies, including chalk, slates and notebooks. UNICEF’s goal is to reach about 80,000 children with these measures, ensuring that they do not fall any farther behind.
Other organizations are taking similar measures. Plan International is building safe spaces for children which include temporary education centers as well. “We know that children are going to be among the most affected by this disaster, so it is of the utmost importance to work quickly and efficiently to help girls and boys cope with the stress of what they’ve been through and give them the space to express themselves in a safe and secure environment,” said Rossana Viteri, director of Plan International Ecuador.
Additionally, these centers will provide training to parents on how to help their children during this time. Training programs include hygiene, sanitation and safety. The goal is to protect the livelihoods of displaced children across the country. The health training is important, because UNICEF reports that thousands of displaced children are at a heightened risk of disease. The risk is highest in coastal areas, which have been deemed “hotspots” for diseases such as Zika and malaria.
For groups like UNICEF and Plan International, ensuring children maintain the best possible living standards is one of the top priorities while Ecuador rebuilds. If children can maintain their education through this crisis, they will be better equipped to someday return to school.
– Emily Milakovic
Photo: Flickr
Early Childhood Development Now, Success Later
Children can be underestimated. They are born with the ability to absorb the world around them, and their experiences shape them in unique ways. The effects of early childhood development can have a significant impact on their success when it is time for school and future careers.
By age three, children’s brains are 82 percent of their adult size. It is vital to exercise the brain in its earliest years in order to reach developmental milestones later. Everyday activities like talking, reading and singing strengthen young children’s minds.
Trillions of neural synapses, or brain-cell connections, form in the first few years of a baby’s life. Connections will be lost indefinitely if a child is not stimulated with interaction and early experiences.
Playing, speaking and singing to babies prepares them to have a larger vocabulary, succeed in school and even increases their chance of graduating high school.
“The evidence is vast: exposing children before the age of five to stimulating environments strengthens their language development, social and emotional health, problem solving abilities, memory function, use of logic, analytical skills and ability to cope with new situations – leading to significantly better performance later in school,” said Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of Global Partnership for Education, in a Huffpost Education blog.
Albright points out that countries around the world have recently embraced the evidence and began to invest in their early childhood development programs.
Although early childhood development is important purely for the well-being of children, research has shown profound economic benefits as well. According to the Huffpost blog, for every dollar countries spend on pre-school programs, there is a $7 to $8 of economic, health and social progress.
Successful initiatives begin well before pre-school, with pre-natal maternal health, proper nutrition for breastfeeding mothers and adult caregiving skills.
Many cultures around the world benefit from classes that train the community to provide nurturing and age-appropriate activities in pre-school. Particularly low-income and disadvantaged communities often need extra efforts to create an engaging environment that will strengthen the cognitive development of children under two.
Quality early childhood care feeds a child’s ability to reach their full potential and contribute to their society.
Some obstacles developing countries encounter in establishing Early childhood care and education (ECCE) programs are a lack of funding, limited country capacity and low social demand. Organizations like Global Partnership for Education combat these barriers by providing technical and financial support, providing grants to finance the programs and supporting capacity development and knowledge sharing by pointing to the evidence.
Even though children do not talk back initially, they will learn and understand faster if they are engaged and spoken to. It is vital to educate populations around the world on the impact of early childhood care on development because it is not always prioritized simply for lack of knowledge. Quality ECCE can transform the resilience of communities and reap economic benefits.
– Emily Ednoff
Photo: Flickr
New App Makes Tracking Healthcare Data in India Easier
With assistance from UNICEF, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India has introduced an Android-based tablet application called Auxiliary Nurse Midwives Online (ANMOL). This app makes recording and tracking healthcare data easier and more efficient.
In India, there are 293,000 Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANM), according to UNICEF. They are village-level health workers and are the first point of contact between communities and health services in India.
Typically, ANMs serve 3,000 to 5,000 people each and their work consists of providing primary health care services, nutrition and immunization programs, as well as child health and family planning services.
One crucial aspect of their job is collecting and tracking healthcare data. This is often seen as a slow, time-consuming process since ANMs must enter the data into registers, which are eventually entered into a central server.
The time spent maintaining registries could easily be reduced, which is ANMOL’s main objective. Manually updating the information is also problematic, as there are risks of information being entered incorrectly, or too late.
The ANMOL app is a multifaceted mobile tablet-based application and offers a solution to improving data collection and the overall standards of child and maternal health service provision in India.
It makes the work of ANMs paperless, bringing them online and exponentially reduces the time it takes to enter healthcare data into the central database.
“[ANMs] are able to use the tablets to enter and update the service records of beneficiaries on real time basis, ensuring prompt data entry and updates,” stated a report by UNICEF.
“ANMOL is aimed at improving the quality, effectiveness and timeliness of the delivery of quality services, specifically to rural populations, to ensure better healthcare for women and children,” said Dr. Srihari Dutta, Health Specialist at UNICEF India.
The app brings awareness to rural populations and educates them on different healthcare initiatives.
India, the world’s second most populous country, will benefit greatly from such an application, which allows for rapid entry of millions of individuals’ health information.
According to Matters India, in addition to data collection, ANMOL complements the roles of ANMs as counselors by providing readily available information about newborns, pregnant women and mothers in their respective areas.
“Prevention and awareness about non-communicable diseases, which are largely linked to our way of living, dietary habits, and lack of exercise will go a long way in ensuring that the country remains healthy,” said Shri J.P. Nadda, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare.
On April 6, 2016, the Ministry of Health tweeted, “ANMOL App is Aadhaar enabled and will help in the authentication of records of field workers and beneficiaries. #digital health #TransformingIndia.”
– Michelle Simon
Photo: Flickr
Task Force for Global Health: Secretariat to Global Organization
Beginning in 1984 as the Task Force for Child Survival, the Task Force for Global Health started as a leading secretariat for various international health organizations such as UNICEF, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the World Bank. The Task Force worked alongside these global health organizations to design and improve effective child and family wellness, healthcare and survival strategies.
Thirty years later, the Task Force for Global Health has grown into a global nonprofit organization for public health. According to Forbes Magazine, the Task Force is the fourth largest nonprofit in the U.S. Headquartered in Decatur, Georgia, and under the leadership of public health expert Dr. Mark Rosenberg since 1999, the organization stands as the biggest nonprofit in Georgia since its expansion in 2013.
The Task Force focuses on three major areas: improving the efficiency of public health systems and field epidemiology, providing accessible treatment of immunizations and vaccines and eradicating neglected tropical diseases.
However, despite the Task Force’s incredible reputation and longstanding credentials, it remains largely unknown to a majority of the world. In an interview conducted by Georgia Center for Nonprofits’ (GCN) quarterly magazine, Georgia Nonprofit NOW, Rosenberg explains that keeping the Task Force under wraps was not only an intentional but effective strategy.
Rosenberg told GCN, “From the beginning, we have always tried to build coalitions, but it’s not always easy to get organizations to work together. If you want a partnership to work, our founder Bill Foege taught us, you’ve got to shine the light on your partners, and not on yourselves. We focus attention on our partners, and as a result, we are not well known in Georgia.”
The Task Force’s decision to maintain a low-key profile has resulted in high effectivity, not only as a major collaborator to some of the world’s most well-known nonprofit organizations but also as a large scale mobilizer towards peace and health care reform.
The Task Force for Global Health has managed to cover an incredible amount of ground in improving healthcare and offering accessible vaccinations and treatments to approximately 495 million people in 149 countries. The organization provides support and professional level healthcare training programs in 43 countries around the world, which results in widespread, efficient and accessible health care globally. Having formed strong partnerships with private and public healthcare providers and programs worldwide, the Task Force for Global Health has and continues to succeed in bringing about incredible reform and is changing the lives of millions of people every day.
– Jenna Salisbury
Tablet Computers: Enhancing Global Literacy Rates
Researchers from MIT, Tufts and Georgia State University are conducted a study to determine whether tablet computers that have with literacy applications can improve global literacy rates among children living in extremely poor communities.
As part of the first phase of the study, tablets were sent to a pair of Ethiopian villages with no schools or written culture, a suburban South African school with a student-to-teacher teacher ratio of 60 to 1 and a rural school in the U.S. with mostly low-income students.
The tablets contained specially designed apps to help illiterate children ages four to 11 learn letters, sounds and reading fundamentals. The children in Ethiopia had never seen electricity or paper before this study.
Maryanne Wolf, founder and director of Tuft’s Center for Reading and Language Research, visited Ethiopia in 2013 and saw how excited the children were to use the tablets.
“The children learned to be facile so quickly—it was breathtaking,” Wolf said, according to a Tufts Now article.
In the African deployments, students who used the tablets scored much higher than those who did not. The American students also improved their scores dramatically after using the tablets for just four months.
“The whole premise of our project is to harness the best science and innovation to bring education to the world’s most under-resourced children,” associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT Cynthia Breazeal said, reports an MIT News article.
The main theme of this project is that it is self-starting. The research team purposely did not tell the children what to do with the tablets because if the project expands, they will not be able to bring in coaches to teach the children how to use the apps.
Within minutes of receiving the tablet, one Ethiopian boy figured out how to turn it on. Within a week, the Ethiopian children had the apps up and running.
The research team is currently analyzing the data collected from the trials. They have also created a nonprofit organization called Curious Learning, which is now looking for partners to help launch larger pilot programs in an effort to improve global literacy rates.
– Kerri Whelan
Photo: Flickr
World Bank: Investing in Education for Adolescent Girls
One of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals is achieving gender equality, not only because it is right, but because it is proven to help alleviate extreme poverty.
According to the World Bank, “No society can develop sustainably without transforming the distribution of opportunities, resources and choices for males and females so that they have equal power to shape their own lives and contribute to their families, communities,and countries.”
On April 13, 2016, the World Bank announced a $2.5 billion investment to be distributed over the next five years for education projects directly benefiting adolescent girls, ages 12 to 17. The announcement was followed by a statement from First Lady of the Unites States Michelle Obama, urging key policymakers and influencers around the world to support more initiatives geared toward education for adolescent girls.
Empowering and educating women can transform future generations and impact entire countries. The funding will focus on areas in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, which have the highest number of out-of-school girls, equipping them to reach their full potential by having access to quality education.
“The evidence is very clear: when we invest in girls’ education, and we embrace women in our workforce, that doesn’t just benefit them, it benefits all of us,” said Michelle Obama at the Let Girls Learn event during the World Bank Group’s Spring Meetings.
Factors that make women vulnerable to extreme poverty include being subjected to unpaid work, having fewer assets and resources than men, being exposed to gender-based violence and being forced into early marriage.
According to the USAID, although some level of gender inequality exists in all areas of the world, the disparity is especially pronounced in developing countries. Countries with above-average gender inequality correlate with higher extreme poverty rates. Because of this, female empowerment is a core development objective recognized universally.
“When women’s productivity in areas such as agriculture increases, the benefits are amplified across families and generations,” said the USAID in their discussion series about gender and extreme poverty. “Evidence from a range of countries shows that relative to men, women spend more of the income they control in ways that benefit their children, improving nutrition, health and educational opportunities.”
The World Bank’s investment will fund programs that provide adolescent girls with quality education at the secondary level. The investment also includes the provision of scholarships, conditional cash transfers and access to clean drinking water and toilets.
The organization’s commitment to education for girls stems from the statistic that every year of secondary education correlates with an 18 percent increase in a girl’s future earning power.
Funding programs focused on education for adolescent girls is just one aspect of a broader effort by the World Bank to delay child marriage, improve access to reproductive health services as well as strengthen skills and job opportunities for women around the globe.
– Emily Ednoff
Photo: Flickr
WHO and PAHO Launch Worldwide Zika Virus Database
The World Health Organization (WHO) has teamed up with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to launch a Zika virus database to list and categorize all scientific studies on the Zika virus worldwide. The project is focused on helping global researchers understand and combat the virus.
The two agencies have identified and collected all investigations and research on Zika, including those that have been, or are in the process of being published and compiled them into a searchable database, according to a recent press release by the PAHO.
Experts creating the Zika virus database included the search mechanism in order to help researchers explore unknown factors about the possible relationship between Zika and congenital malformations.
The WHO declared a public emergency on Feb. 1, 2016, due to Zika’s suspected link to a range of serious health concerns, including birth defects in babies born to mothers who are infected with the virus and the development of neurological disorders in adults.
Researchers have been focused on identifying a correlation between Zika and microcephaly, a rare condition that causes infants to be born with abnormally small heads and brain damage.
Zika is a predominately mosquito-borne disease that arrived in Brazil last spring. Since then, it has spread to 34 countries and territories in the Americas. Between 3 to 4 million people could be infected with the virus by early next year, according to the WHO.
Communities affected by poverty face the most risk, as the virus is easily transmitted in crowded areas where access to sheltered air conditioned space is limited. A lack of running water and waste management combined with poor housing in urban areas also contributes to the continued spread of the virus.
The Zika virus database is part of the WHO’s wider plan to combat the disease globally through its Strategic Response Framework and Joint Operations Plan.
The strategy is currently focusing on mobilizing and coordinating partners, experts and resources to help countries provide medical care, communicate risks and proper protection measures to the affected communities. The initiative also involves fast-track research on vaccine development.
– Lauren Lewis
Photo: Flickr
Gates Foundation Invests $5 Million on Malaria Research
According to the Gates Foundation, malaria continues to be a major health concern in almost 100 countries, infecting 207 million people and killing 627,000 individuals in 2012 alone. Despite an increase in malaria funding over the past several years, challenges remain in completely eradicating this disease.
However, fighting malaria is one of the Foundation’s main missions and the organization has contributed $2 billion to the cause to date. Notably, the Gates Foundation launched a multi-year strategy known as Accelerate to Zero in 2013 that focuses on making new partnerships for more efficient, affordable drugs.
In addition, this past April, the organization offered the biotechnology innovations firm Amyris an additional $5 million, in the form of a stock buyback, for its malaria research project.
Amyris is a biotechnology innovation firm whose partnership with the Gates Foundation spans roughly ten years. Replacing the relatively expensive and time-consuming method of directly extracting artemisinin from the Chinese Sweet Wormwood plant, Amyris created a new strain of Baker’s yeast microbes that produce artemisinic acid. According to the firm, the result is a “precursor of artemisinin, an effective anti-malarial drug.”
With malaria research grants from the Gates Foundation and partnership with the Institute for OneWorld Health and the University of California, Berkley, the organization has since distributed the microbes to Sanofi for mass manufacture.
In 2015, the company was awarded the United Nations Global Citizen Award for this continued effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
Amyris is also expected to develop faster, cheaper methods of manufacturing pharmaceuticals that otherwise require elaborate processes for extraction.
This year’s renewed grant will ensure the application of this technology and the actual reduced cost of malaria medicine.
According to John Melo, the CEO of Amyris, the firm’s goal is the complete eradication of malaria through low-cost and sustainable cures. He further stressed the importance of future cooperation between private and public sectors in battling other epidemics.
– Haena Chu
Photo: Flickr