10,000 Workforce Of Gulabi Didis Are Working Across India To Strengthen India's Fight Against Maternal Health And Infant Mortality

As part of Dettol Banega Swasth India initiative, more than 10,000 Gulabi Didis have been deployed in aspirational districts of India with a goal to ensure that no child dies due to malnutrition and every woman in the local community has safe and healthy pregnancy.

IAS Pavneet Kaur, Collector & District Magistrate, Amravati, acknowledged the value of initiatives like Reach Each Child.

During the keynote address at the inauguration, Ravi Bhatnagar, Director, External Affairs & Partnership SOA, Reckitt, talked about the programme and said, 'Mother and children should lead a healthy life and no child should die due to malnutrition, keeping this objective in front, our efforts and cooperation are always with the government, administration, and society. We want to narrate Bharat to Bharat story through our Gulabi Didis, who work tirelessly for their communities and with the help of good facilities, propagate best practices on health and hygiene. We support Gulabi Didis to make a sustainable change in the communities towards health outcomes.'

The Reach Each Child Programme, currently works in state of Maharashtra and Rajasthan and focusses on locally-led initiatives to drive its goal of zero malnutrition deaths. These women are trained on nutrition by experts like Padmashree Dr Indira Chakravarty, Ex IMA president Dr Narender Saini and various other global experts.

The facility is staffed with medical professionals who help in children's health, and it is designed to serve as a link between hospital and home care.

The NRC center's mission is to give critically malnourished children the appropriate care they need after receiving life-saving treatment in a hospital or residential care facility.

Over the last few years, women as a ratio of India's workforce has seen a marginal increase, and programme like Reckitt wants to further the cause of employing more and more women through such initiatives, as one woman employed helps the society as a whole.

Currently, the Reach Each Child programme has reached 72,700 children under five and has provided cash assistance to 161 families to pay for treatment of malnourishment. Moreover, Reckitt has supported 8,000 pregnant women through multiple interventions and helped 91 per cent of new mothers initiate breastfeeding. According to Reckitt's Social Impact Investment Report 2021, there's been a significant impact on families with no malnutrition deaths among supported children in Amravati and Nandurbar districts of Maharashtra, in the two years of the programme. Not just that, women, who hail from local tribes have been uplifted because of the programme.