Home deliveries and/or not following a few healthy practices during the initial days of a child’s birth are taking away many kids’ lives before they reach the age of 5. It also leaves many children malnourished for entire life which effects both physical & mental development.

Child deaths & malnourishment has been a critical issue in tribal regions of India.

Our work in tribal regions:
Our team has been working in Jhapra gram panchayat (a total of 3 villages) of Sukma district, Chhattisgarh along with the government to address the issues of malnutrition.

What are we doing?
1) Identifying the SAM (Severely Acute Malnourished) Children in the communities & admitting them in NRC (Nutrition Rehabilitation Center).
2) Follow up with the families post discharge from NRC to ensure that the kids get nourished soon.
3) Giving critical knowledge through videos to the mothers & communities on the best practices of infant/early child care etc. by training a local village woman.
4) Creating interesting videos in local tribal languages.
5) Developing Android Apps to monitor the usage of the videos.

How are we doing this?
NRPs for SAM children:

We are in the process of identifying and building capacities of local resources through technical and field training. The local resources called Nutrition Resource Persons (NRPs) will have knowledge on essential nutrition for both mothers and children. NRPs will ensure identifying SAM children, convincing families and assisting them for admission in NRC. Furthermore ensuring children stay in NRC for the required period and later proper follow-ups happen with the doctor. Once a child returns to the village, keeping a track on their growth.

We impart knowledge about the best practices during child’s birth through videos. The videos are loaded in a 7” tablet which will be used by a trained local woman (Swasthya Saathi) to give knowledge at door step to the entire community. An android app is used for tracking the performance of the village worker through auto-generated reports.

The problem has been immense in these tribal areas and we have limited resources to solve the issues quickly. As per our mandate, we are working with the Govt. primarily on identification & treatment of malnourished children. But, we can’t ignore the issues of life & death that happen around us. 

Here is another incident that our team has shared recently:

“One more lady delivered kid at home today at 3.40 PM. Luckily, I was there in the village at that time. The kid looks healthy but the mother is very weak and not able to give milk. Villagers don’t even have a clean blade to cut the umbilical cord, there is blood & dust all over the kid. The ambulance was also not available. I was able to arrange a vehicle through Naresh (PMRDF) and got the kid admitted in the hospital. Both mother and baby girl are fine.”

But, our team can’t be there everywhere. We need to quickly build capacities of local villagers, give them knowledge and convert that knowledge into action.

Your support will help us to quickly reach more tribal families/villages in the most under-developed regions of India.

We look forward to your support in reaching more kids & saving the lives. We promise to make the best use of your generous contributions for the noble cause.