Register with Mobile Mitra for information on safe delivery and childcare

Eight months pregnant Tejashshree Manjrekar (25) is happy that she now gets health-related information through a voice call twice a week. Manjrekar is one of the many expecting mothers in Mumbai who has registered with Mobile Mitra initiative, a non-profit organisation dealing in Advancing Reduction Mortality and Morbidity of Mothers, children and Neonates (ARMMAN). Doctors say that initiatives like the Mumbai-based ARMMAN ensure safe delivery and that they provide pregnant women proper advice through voice call.

There are 700 women who have already registered with the Mobile Mitra initiative at Sion Hospital. The organisation keeps track of the health of the pregnant woman and the child till it's a year old.
The project was launched in the gynaecology department of the Sion Hospital only last December.

Manjrekar, a resident of Pratiksha Nagar, Sion who became pregnant for the first time, enrolled herself when she went to the hospital for registration of delivery.

"I enrolled two months ago when I was six months pregnant. Now I get a call from them twice a week, and they provide me information like the injection I need to take, the kind of investigation I need to undergo, the supplementary tablets I should take, etc. My experience with them has been very good. Doctors too tell us all this, but they don't have the time to explain these things to each and every patient." said Manjrekar.

This project is headed by Dr Aparna Hegde, who is the founder, chairperson and managing trustee of ARMMAN. She took her MBBS and MD (obstetrics and gynecology) from the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College, Sion, and completed her International Urogynaecological Association Fellowship (2011) from the department of Urogynaecology at Cleveland Clinic, Florida.

"This is a unique service. Most of the hospitals find it difficult to give patients proper attention because of the workload. We contact women twice a week during pregnancy, once a day in the first week after the birth, twice a week until the infant is three months old, and once a week till the baby is 12 months old. In case they miss our call, they can call us back at our call centre in Santacruz," said Dr Hegde.

148 women die during childbirth everyday in India.
A child dies in the country every 15 seconds.
More than one in five children who die within four weeks of birth are Indians.
India accounts for 2.1 million of the 9.7 million children who die worldwide annually before their fifth birthday.
Approximately 43% of the low birth weight infants in the world are born in India.
About 55% of the underweight children under five in the world live in India.