Social Innovation: India Connecting and Vaccinating

India is using social innovation to protect its next generation. This August Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Indian health minister, announced a new initiative to help the country's immunisation of newborn babies by collecting the mobile phone numbers of pregnant women in order to monitor their babies' vaccinations. Since January the government has collected approximately 26 million mobile numbers of expectant women and it hopes to finish the process this December.

Through their mobile phones, these women will be tracked in the future by the central or state governments to ensure their babies receive the full immunisation programme; as babies in India need to be immunised against tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whopping cough and measles; known as the DPT vaccine. Unfortunately, India ranks low globally in its rate of vaccinating its population and in 2010 only 72% of Indian babies received the three doses of the DPT vaccine. So, this social innovation programme will hopefully make a difference to new life.

Though according to experts, India faces a challenge immunising babies because of its weak, public health structure and inadequate monitoring. However, this programme of social innovation has the promise to enable the Indian health authorities to monitor its service at a national level and serve the local communities. By making contact with the new mums via their mobile phones, the central government will be able to monitor whether new born babies are fully immunised and identify districts where children are not getting the required vaccines.

Mr Azad explained that the local health workers began collecting the mobile numbers in February and sending the data into business processing offices set up by the central government. However, Mr Azad has openly admitted that he has been disappointed with the information gathered because when he started calling numbers on the list, he found many of the numbers to be inaccurate. Tracking 26 million babies is not an easy job, and the only way India can manage it and incorporate checks was by using social innovation via technology.

Social innovation aided by India's technology revolution is sweeping across the country and is now also influencing government policies, helping to improve the quality of life and lives. This could soon help to place India firmly within the major world economies. Mobile phones have become one of the most important inventions of the 21^st century leading to a remarkable communications transformation of how we connect with each other.

Photo Credit: Rajiv R Gutpta