A Mobile Guide Toward Better Health: How Mobile Kunji Is Improving Birth Outcomes in Bihar, India (Innovations Case Narrative: Mobile Kunji (Mobile Guide))

Abstract

highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world. With a population larger than that of Western Europe and a limited infrastructure, reaching the state’s 27 million women of childbearing age is a daunting task. The Ananya Program—a collaboration between the Bihar state government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—aims to reduce maternal and infant mortality in the state significantly by December 2015. BBC Media Action’s role in Ananya is to communicate life-saving information and help to shape healthy behaviors that tackle the main causes of maternal, newborn, and child deaths. BBC Media Action uses media to inform, connect, and empower people in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe. Media Action, which reaches over 200 million people globally, has worked for more than 15 years in India on a wide range of projects focused on gender, labor rights, disaster preparedness, the environment, HIV/AIDS, TB, and maternal and child health. The Ananya Program asked BBC Media Action to tackle 11 priority behaviors among rural women: (1) institutional delivery; (2) safe delivery at home with a skilled birth attendant; (3) preventive postnatal care; (4) skin-to-skin/“kangaroo” care; (5) early and exclusive breastfeeding; (6) age-appropriate complementary