Introduction to the Projects

THE BEGINNING (poem about the bond of motherhood)
“Where have I come from, where did you pick me up?” the baby asked
its mother.
She answered, half crying, half laughing, and clasping the
baby to her breast-
“You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling.
You were in the dolls of my childhood’s games; and when with
clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made the unmade
you then.
You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship
I worshipped you.
In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my
mother you have lived.
In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have
been nursed for ages.
When in girlhood my heart was opening its petals, you hovered
as a fragrance about it.
Your tender softness bloomed in my youthful limbs, like a glow
in the sky before the sunrise.
Heaven’s first darling, twain-born with the morning light, you
have floated down the stream of the world’s life, and at last you
have stranded on my heart.
As I gaze on your face, mystery overwhelms me; you who belong
to all have become mine.
For fear of losing you I hold you tight to my breast. What
magic has snared the world’s treasure in these slender arms of
mine?”
Rabindranath Tagore(India (and Bengal)'s first Nobel laureate)

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As we read about of the love of a mother for her child in Tagore's verse, we are reminded how beautiful and precious this bond is. A very basic requirement for it to flourish is for pregnant women and newborns to be healthy. 

Our team travels to eastern India to broadly work towards that end with following specific goals:

1. Collect data from study to improve accuracy of HemoGlobe.

Anemia is a persistent global health problem affecting millions of mothers and newborns and contributing to 100,000 maternal and 600,000 newborn deaths annually. JHPIEGO and JHU-CBID are developing a community-based screening tool HemoGlobe that transforms rural health workers' cellphones into non-invasive, prick-free hemoglobinometers. Concurrently, GPS information can be transmitted to the cloud for display via Google maps on PCs, laptops or smartphones anywhere. This feature can be used for better targeting of public health resources to areas with high prevalence of severe maternal anemia.

Hemoglobe Trailer

2. Validate the Clinical decision support system concept for RHP.

One often underrated but important provider of health care, including anemia detection and treatment, in Indian rural context is the rural healthcare practitioner(RHP) or rural medical practitioner(RMP). By augmenting his last mile reach of rural patients with a modern and accurate clinical decision system, we can potentially create dramatic change in healthcare delivery to individuals in rural areas who are otherwise least likely to obtain proper diagnosis and treatment.

Team Kolkata