Project Lead(s): Michael Lwin
Issue
In Myanmar, 282 mothers die per 100,000 live births, while 62 children die before the age of 5 per 1,000 live births. Most of these deaths are preventable; some of the most common causes of death are maternal anemia, jaundice, and beriberi.
Infant mortality accounts for 80 percent of child mortality at the national level, and half of all child deaths occur during the neonatal period. Furthermore, nearly one-third of children under the age of five were found to be stunted.
Greater access to health education and services would decrease this startling rate of mortality.
Solution
Koe-Koe Tech developed the phone-based ‘maymay’ app for pregnant women and mothers across Myanmar. The app aimed to reduce maternal and under-5 mortality rates by providing women and their partners with access to quality health information regarding their pregnancy.
Maymay featured: access to 10,000 doctors and midwives via telemedicine, an appointment agenda with push notifications, a feedback form to rate doctors and midwives, and health quizzes for current and expecting mothers. Additionally, users had access within the app to a platform for content on nutrition, financial literacy, and other key aspects of health developed by Save the Children, UNICEF, Worldvision, Pact, and other partners.
The app was made available for Android and through Facebook, due to the popularity of both platforms in Myanmar.
Outcome
Koe-Koe Tech’s maymay application resulted in wide-scale health improvements for pregnant women, mothers, and children in Myanmar.
Maymay had over 280,000 fans on Facebook and received up to 10,000 messages per month on Facebook Messenger. Additionally, it had 50,000 monthly users on Android, growing at a rate of 6,000 new users per month.
Maymay was scaled up nationwide, and has secured deals with Myanmar’s Department of Social Welfare (DSW) and UNICEF. In partnering with the national government, maymay will integrate the government’s maternal conditional cash transfer (MCCT) program into their innovation, where mothers will receive funding just for using the app.
With its rapid growth and government partnership, Koe-Koe Tech hopes to add 1 million mothers and their babies to the platform each year in order to keep up with the rate of live births.