India: mHealth: Malnutrition Eradication

Nutrition Educators Work Hard

The Steady Fight Against Malnutrition – RMF Community Nutrition Educators Work to Improve Health Outcomes

Convincing people to adopt healthier behaviors can be a difficult job. In Southwestern Madhya Pradesh, where RMF’s Community Nutrition Educators (CNEs) work in 600 villages across 5 districts every day, targeted health education is crucial to combating malnutrition.

For four years, each CNE has patiently worked in communities, identifying children and families in need of counseling, referring serious cases to treatment, and building crucial bonds with the community. Since 2010, our program has reached over 400,000 people with targeted health and nutrition messages.

While not flashy or particularly glamorous, RMF’s boots-on-the-ground, or more accurately, chappals-on-the-ground, have been a steady and formidable force fighting malnutrition and increasing ownership of nutrition outcomes in some of the most difficult communities in the world. Each CNE’s relationship with her communities is crucial to improving nutrition and health related knowledge. These relationships are priceless, and earned through tireless efforts over four years of extremely hot summers and monsoon seasons of flooded and washed out roads.

The CNE’s task is not an easy one. According to the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) 2011 survey, in Barwani District an estimated 34.8% of children suffer from acute malnutrition. In the same district, there are alarmingly poor indicators of health and sanitation behaviors. Only 13% of mothers reported washing their hands before feeding their child, 53% reported washing their or their child’s hands after defecation, and only 5.8% use sanitary latrines. In addition, at the age of 5 months, only 41.2% of children were exclusively breastfed, and only 68% were breastfed within three hours of birth.

Mothers Attend Screenings in Khandwa

In four months, we have directly observed 179 adoptions of behaviors recommended in our videos, and are working on verifying the longer term effects of our videos, such as the increase in awareness of practices promoted in the videos. Our goal is to see 6,500 households practicing behaviors outlined in the movies after a year of screenings across the 90 targeted villages in Khandwa.

RMF’s CNEs are now armed with three distinct tools:

1. information
2. technology
3. tenacity.

Any one of these is needed in the fight against malnutrition, but when combined they go a long way towards liberating human potential and eradicating malnutrition.