ChildCount+ is an mHealth platform developed by the Millennium Villages Project aimed at empowering communities to improve child survival and maternal health. Our software documentation pages contain a more detailed overview of ChildCount+ and lots of technical information about the software too.
ChildCount+ has three primary objectives:
- To establish a community health events reporting and verbal autopsy system for Community Health Workers (CHWs). Our hypothesis is that timely information on the burden of disease alongside better understanding of preventable mortality and challenges faced in accessing care has the potential to critically inform the targeting and delivery of interventions. By building upon existing site personnel and resources, a low-cost Millennium Villages Project-CHILDCOUNT+ System is being developed to test this hypothesis.
- To develop and implement a two-way mobile phone-based community health events reporting, feedback, and illness alert system. This system will monitor and manage follow-up on births and deaths; pregnant women and newborns; children under 5 years; and adult illnesses such as Tuberculosis (TB), malaria and non-communicable diseases. ChildCount+: A Community Health Events Reporting and Alert System, will integrate with existing information management systems and catalyze action around these significant community health events.
- To improve tools and reporting formats to enable the use of data for active case management, decision-making and performance monitoring of health workers. The ChildCount+ system will provide the basis for longitudinal information tracking at an individual and household level within the Millennium Villages. Integrated with an existing platform known as the Millennium Global Village-Network (MGV-Net), ChildCount+ will take advantage of the multilingual, multinational, open source information system being implemented throughout MVP. Capturing information via paper, mobile phones and computers will bring together information from community, clinic and referral centers to provide an overarching view of health within the villages.
By accomplishing these objectives, ChildCount+ will help community health workers to:
Community Health Worker (CHW) Training on submitting patient data electronically
1. Register every child under age 5: Create a “living” registry of all children under age five and pregnant women in a community. This list provides the basis for community health teams to monitor the health status of children and women who are to give birth.
2. Screen for malnutrition every 90 days: Record the Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) of every child from 6 months to 5 years every 90 days. When a child with acute malnutrition is detected, the program provides support for Plumpy’nut based malnutrition treatment (where available) based on community based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) protocols.
3. Monitor for malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia: track and treat these three major, preventable causes of death in children under age five. ChildCount+ provides support for home-based malaria Rapid Diagnostics Tests (RDTs) and Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) dosing, oral rehydration salt (ORS) usage and pneumonia diagnosis and treatment with CHW administered antibiotics.
Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) Assessment
4. Support child immunizations: Group all children in monthly age groups to easily systematize an immunization schedule. Record all immunizations and follow-up with children who are behind on their immunization schedule. Manage vaccination campaigns.
5. Record all local births and deaths: Register all newborns and record child and maternal deaths, as well as miscarriages. Investigate cause of death and share findings with local health teams and communities.
ChildCount+ is free and open-source software built with RapidSMS both available under the LGPL.