Yesterday, Unilever’s hygiene soap brand Lifebuoy and UK-based nonprofit
The Power of Nutrition announced an
innovative partnership aimed at improving hygiene and reduce undernutrition
among mothers in India, using mobile technology to promote handwashing with
soap as part of a nutrition program. The partnership was launched at the
Concordia Annual Summit alongside the UN General Assembly.
Handwashing with soap is one of the 11 proven interventions to address child
undernutrition. Lack
of handwashing can lead to infectious, diarrheal-related diseases, which weaken
the body’s ability to absorb nutrition from food. One of the most cost-effective
interventions to prevent diarrheal-related deaths, handwashing with soap is
proven to reduce diarrhea
incidence by close to half.
“Lifebuoy embodies purposeful brands through its rigorous focus on … making
impact on the ground. But breakthroughs at scale can only happen when we work
together,” said Unilever CEO Alan Jope. “This partnership combines
Unilever’s and Lifebuoy’s marketing and behavior change
expertise,
along with The Power of Nutrition’s innovative funding platform, to tackle poor
hygiene and malnutrition in an unprecedented way.”
Through this partnership, Lifebuoy and The Power of Nutrition are co-funding
behavior change aimed at improving hygiene and nutrition, using mobile
technology to reach 2.7 million women in India by 2021.
The initiative features a unique mobile app called Mobile Doctarni, a
voice-based service that delivers critical health and hygiene information to
mothers living in rural parts of India, where access to doctors, information and
TV are limited. Created by Lifebuoy, the app provides time-sensitive information
to mothers, depending on her pregnancy stage or age of her child, thus replacing
the need for costly field visits by healthcare workers. The partnership supports
the government of India’s new initiative to address undernutrition in the
country.
“Investing in hygiene and nutrition has the power to unlock huge social and
economic changes, especially in countries with a high burden of stunting,” said
Martin Short, CEO at The Power of Nutrition. “Our partnership with Unilever
and Lifebuoy unlocks committed public sector resources and enables us to
multiply this funding, thereby maximizing the total investment in hygiene and
nutrition.”
Undernutrition and poor hygiene are holding millions of children back from
realizing their full potential. Poor nutrition is the underlying
cause
of over half of the 5.4 million children under five who die annually — roughly
3.1 million children each
year; and poor hygiene
accounts for about one-fifth of these deaths – roughly 1.2 million children
each year.
Through Mobile Doctarni, mothers or mothers-to-be in rural parts of India can
receive free, personalized, weekly, voice-based hygiene information via mobile
for one to two months, based on their pregnancy period or their child’s age.
Evaluation of the Mobile Doctarni
program
showed strong results on handwashing behaviors at key occasions:
-
For general mothers: The program was able to significantly increase
handwashing with soap/liquids by about one occasion per day
-
For expectant/new mothers: Frequency of handwashing vastly improved among
participants exposed to the campaign — an average of 1.5 times more in
handwashing frequency.
While the new partnership is focusing on India — which has the highest number of
stunted children (when a child’s physical and mental development is impeded due
to poor nutrition in the world,
representing one-third of the global total of stunted children under the age of
five — the partners say they will aim to create a model of this program, for
replicating effectively in other areas.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Sep 25, 2019 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST