Highlights from Two CommCare Projects in India

Thanks to support from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) funding, Dimagi is working with over 50 organizations to implement numerous CommCare projects throughout India. Below are some recent updates from two of these projects, including a a cleft palate surgery project in Assam and a mobile nutrition monitoring program in Bihar.

Supporting Cleft Palate Surgeries in Assam: Because children with cleft palates are often malnourished, many of them are unable to undergo cleft palate surgery when presented the chance.

In response to this problem, the American NGO Operation Smile created a CommCare application to better monitor cleft palate patients’ nutrition before and after their surgeries and to improve communication with patients’ families. Operation Smiles’ CommCare application is currently being piloted in the district of Nagaon, Assam, where Operation Smile is working closely with the Assamese Government and ASHAs to identify patients and bring them to their Care Center for surgery.

This past weekend, Operation Smile announced that two-year old Hanjala Islam became the first  patient in the CommCare pilot to receive cleft palate surgery. The photo below is of Hanjala and the Operation Smile team, including a team member holding up the Operation Smile CommCare application that’s being used on a tablet.

Mobile Nutrition Monitoring in Bihar: In Bihar, India, Oxford Policy Management has recently been engaged by DfID’s Bihar Technical Assistance Support Team to design and support the Government to implement a maternal and child health cash transfer in two Districts in Bihar for four years.

Through this Bihar Child Support Programme (BCSP), Anganwadi workers are using CommCare to monitor women that are a part of a nutrition-focused conditional cash transfer program. The CommCare application allows Anganwadi workers to register beneficiaries, calculate children’s weight status, share behavior change communication videos, and track what services are available and are being used by beneficiaries each month.

By January of 2014, it’s expected that nearly 15,000 pregnant women and mothers in Bihar, India, will soon be registered and followed by Anganwadi workers that are using CommCare. Read more about the BCSP’s mobile nutrition monitoring project on Oxford Policy Management’s website.