Awareness about health and hygiene

The Unicef is running a campaign to innoculate over 33.5 million children in Bangladesh against measles. Apparently, measles kills over 20,000 children in Bangladesh each year. But vaccination is not the only solution. Awareness about civic sense and maintenance of a hygienic environment are just as crucial. And various vehicles can be used for this:

- Microfinance initiatives can impose prerequisites about family health and hygiene habits, and use their activities as a conduit to reach out to the people with better developmental philosophies. The Grameen Bank is already doing this.

- Rural kiosks can be developed into active community centers, and educational videos or documentaries should be shown to the people through this channel. This is something we are trying to do in our research group with new location specific broadcast applications on the tetherless communication architecture.

- Existing distribution infrastructure like that of the PDS or retail agencies can be used to piggyback educative information to people about health issues. HLL is already doing this to some extent, by organizing teaching clinics in villages as part of its Shakti project.