Advice calls for Mothers of Newborn Baby

With the goal of reducing child mortality during the first month of life, the Czech NGO People in Need (PIN) has been working very hard to develop a system to provide new mothers with timely information that will help them take better care of their children.

Photo by Jiri Pasz

The system uses IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology. Midwives at the health centers register the telephone numbers of new mothers soon after birth. Later that these mothers receive seven phone calls with seven pre-recorded messages along the first month of life of the baby. The careful content-development process followed by PIN has produced high quality pre-recorded messages that are well paced, human and direct, allowing listeners to identify with the messages.  As it is shown in the evaluation study for the project, participants retained - several months after the calls - most of the information that they heard in these messages. While the project is only being deployed at this time in the Kampong Tralach district of Kampong Chhnang Province, its success encourages extensive use around the country. The project uses the IVR infrastructure of the USAID-funded SPICE program established by the Open Institute, which includes the IVR plaftorm Verboice developed by the NGO Instedd.