Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Through focused and integrated campaigns and partnerships with local manufacturers, the aim of the programme is to increase availability of zinc supplements. The programme's operations are two-fold. First, it focuses on developing guidelines and training materials to educate health care providers, mothers, and the general public about zinc treatment in conjunction with Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS). The second focus of the programme is to ensure and monitor the availability of zinc supplements, create standards for quality control of zinc tablets, and develop local delivery mechanisms for distribution of the treatment.

Health Education to Mothers is implementer by the Health Education to Villages (HETV) program. The challenges being adressed by HETV are international and national level product availability, national and local level product coverage, health worker/physician training and endorsement and home-based treatment compliance. Zinc supplements are the new addition to diarrhea treatment. Promotion and education of zinc supplementation with ORS in diarrhea treatment will make it the responsibility of the state of Maharashtra to ensure that zinc is used to treat every diarrhea episode in children under 5. Recommendations for zinc treatment are always given in conjunction with ORS and continued feeding. Introducing a new treatment such as zinc creates an opportunity to energize current diarrhea training programs and provides an excellent opportunity to design enhanced or new programs where needed. This new treatment will increase ORS use rates and improve continued feeding practices.