Before Your Birth Day: Pre-Birth Immunization Planning

Marc Mitchell of D-tree International in the U.S. will develop an application that enables community health workers in Zanzibar to register children for immunizations before they are born, to ensure all children are vaccinated on time. Children are currently registered when they are already around four weeks old and only at health facilities, which excludes a lot of children born at home. They will build on their existing program in Zanzibar to develop the mobile phone technology used by Community Health Volunteers, who engage with pregnant women in their homes, for registering infants in the third trimester, generating immunization plans, and providing a support tool to educate mothers on the importance of timely vaccinations. They will test their application in the field by recruiting 100 health volunteers and evaluating immunization levels and timing in around 500 infants.