Operation Sunshine Neonatal Child Mortality Under Project Mansi (Jharkhand)

Problem Statement

About 26 lakhs newborn dies within 28 days globally out of which 6 lakhs dies in India. It states that 80% of deaths are not due to only illness like Pneumonia, diarrhoea, sepsis but also those babies which are born premature, low birth weight babies, breast feeding problem and are classified as high risk newborns. Most of these deaths are preventable if proper antenatal care, institutional delivery, timely referral and after discharge appropriate home based care is ensured by the Sahiya’s/ ASHA’s.

Programme Description

“Operation Sunshine” is an innovative digital platform for real time tracking system of high risk newborns or mothers through mobile android based application software with an integrated approach for reducing neonatal child mortality under Project Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI) – PPP initiative under Jharkhand NHM.

With the scale up of MANSI from one block to 10 block the focus was more on identification and tracking of all high risk cases till they are cured which emerged as a major challenge for the project.

Implementation

MANSI Community Health Facilitators are provided tablets with loaded application in English and Hindi which works off line also. Operation Sunshine dashboard is an online web portal at tatamansi.

Programme Outcomes

1. There has been 16% increase in the identification of high risk case.
2. With early identification of high risk case, timely referral, appropriate home based care and community case management there is an accelerated decline in deaths by 47% in same period of time.
3. First time such kind of application being deployed for High risk case management with an integrated approach.

Scalability

The project has been scaled up across all district of Jharkhand.

Implementation Partners (If any)

Project MANSI and the Operation Sunshine innovation is a joint initiative of Tata Steel Foundation, American India Foundation with active support of Jharkhand- NHM Community Monitoring Cell –Jharkhand.

Financial Implications

Technology development and deployment cost (14 lakhs), Support system cost (7 lakhs) is provided by the consortium of Tata Steel Foundation and American India Foundation.

Source : We Care Coffee Table Book - Good, Replicable and Innovative Practices 2019