MENU
  • Awarded:
    2020
  • Issue Areas:
  • Web:
  • Download Profile Pdf

    About the Organization

    With 30 million pregnancies and 27 million live births annually, India accounts for 11 percent of the global maternal mortality burden. A woman dies in childbirth every fifteen minutes. For each woman who dies, twenty suffer from life-long disability. Two children under five die each minute and four of 10 children are unable to realize their full potential due to chronic undernutrition or stunting. A significant number of these maternal and child deaths are preventable, but delays in a family’s decision to seek care, delays in reaching care, and delays in receiving care contribute to high rates of maternal and child mortality and morbidity.

    To address these challenges, ARMMAN leverages technology to expand information access and promote health seeking behavior for pregnant women, mothers, and children along with training health care providers to improve health service delivery. Through a free mobile voice call service, mMitra, ARMMAN sends timed and targeted preventive care information weekly to mothers during pregnancy and infancy. It recently partnered with the Government of India to jointly manage a similar platform, Kilkari that has delivered care information weekly to 16 million subscribers in five languages. Its partnership with the government also includes a mobile learning platform, Mobile Academy that trains government frontline health workers (ASHAs), reinforcing and refreshing their knowledge of life-saving preventative health behaviors and improving the quality of their engagement with pregnant women, mothers, and children. Mobile Academy has reached 150,000 frontline health workers (ASHAs). It is also working with the government on creation and nation-wide up scaling of protocols for management of high-risk pregnancies by health care providers.

    ARMMAN deploys the ‘tech plus touch’ model that leverages the existing frontline health worker network of the government and partner NGOs with the ubiquity of the mobile phone, to achieve scale cost-effectively. ARMMAN is working towards an India where pregnant women and mothers are equipped with the best health information available, high-risk pregnancies are identified earlier and managed correctly, and maternal and child mortality rates vastly diminish.

    https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/0018_armman_1.jpg

    A woman dies in childbirth every fifteen minutes in India—an astounding statistic in a country that accounts for 11 percent of the global maternal mortality burden.

    https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/0017_armman_2.jpg

    ARMMAN leverages technology to expand information access and promote health seeking behavior for pregnant women, mothers, and children along with training health care providers to improve health service delivery.

    https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/0016_armman_3.jpg

    Aparna’s devotion to this issue is born out of the many preventable deaths she witnessed during her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Mumbai.

    https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/0015_armman_4.jpg

    ARMMAN’s Kilkari service has reached 16 million women in 13 states to date. It will reach an additional 19 million women over the next three years.

    Ambition for Change

    No mother or child should ever die from delay in health seeking; nor from an inability to recognize or treat high-risk factors during pregnancy and childbirth.

    Path to Scale

    Through partnership with the government to scale the mMitra program, reaching expectant mothers, and Mobile Academy reaching frontline health workers across India.

    Skoll Awardee
    Aparna Hegde

    Urogynecologist, Researcher, Founder and Managing Trustee of ARMMAN, ARMMAN

    Dr. Aparna Hegde is an internationally renowned Urogynecologist and Founder and Managing Trustee of ARMMAN. She is an Associate Professor (Hon) of Urogynecology and Head of the upcoming Department of Urogynecology at Cama Hospital, Mumbai, India’s first dedicated comprehensive University-based Center of Excellence in the field. Aparna has lifelong commitment to minimize the preventable mortality and morbidity of mothers and children in India. This is born out of preventable deaths she witnessed during her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Mumbai. Aparna has a Master’s in Science from Stanford University and completed her Urogynecology Fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Florida. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Urogynecology Journal and is an accomplished researcher who has done pioneering work in the field of 2D and 3D USG of the pelvic floor which she teaches internationally.

    Impact & Accomplishments
    • ARMMAN has enrolled 2.2 million subscribers in mMitra.
    • mMitra has partnered with 100 government hospitals and 43 community-based NGO partners.
    • The mobile health education service Kilkari will reach 19 million subscribers over the next three years.
    Affiliated
    Swati Saxena
    Director, Resource Mobilization and Communication, ARMMAN
    Aparna Hegde
    Urogynecologist, Researcher, Founder and Managing Trustee of ARMMAN, ARMMAN
    In the News
    Related Content

    Skoll World Forum Interviews: Spotlight on Digital Health Innovations in India

    With a rapidly burgeoning population that is besieged by startingly inadequate and inequitable health outcomes, India is fertile ground for digital health innovations. As leaders working at the intersection of…

    Innovating Better Health Outcomes for All: Don Gips Joins Three Skoll Awardees at Aspen Ideas 2022

    Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation joined Angela Gichaga, CEO of Financing Alliance for Health; Edith Elliott Co-CEO of Noora Health; and Aparna Hegde, Chair of Armman on a…

    Skoll Foundation Announces 2020 Awards for Social Entrepreneurship

    The Skoll Foundation has announced the five winners of the 2020 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. “The Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship shines a light on emerging leaders who fearlessly…

    See All Awardees