In an innovative experiment of the Right To Information (RTI) Act, where health data is put up in a public realm, the efforts of NGO Deepak Foundation's health workers has led to monitoring of as well as creating demand for health services. It has been around a year that in addition to aanganwadi workers, a village-level health worker, usually a women from the village, appointed by Deepak Foundation, notes down each birth and death as well as details of expectant mothers, and puts the data on a 'wall painting' each month.

The painting is put up by contributions from village women and many times the sarpanch has chipped in half of the Rs 200-odd required for it. Thereafter, the painting is in a public space, be it the aanganwadi, the health centre or a panchayat wall. Though literacy is not too high in these tribal blocks, the writings on the wall are beginning to have an impact.

Archana Joshi, Deepak Foundation director, said the inspiration came from a similar experiment in Maharashtra villages, where data about water resources was made public in similar fashion. The grassroots innovation of the RTI Act, to give a boost to mother and child care, has village walls sporting 15-point data, which are put up every month, with a comparative account of three months available at a glance.

However, it has not been a cakewalk. Predictably, the most resistance came from aanganwadi workers or even nurses.

At some places, village children took to rubbing off the data, and in one village, the painting found its way into a cowshed.

But by and large, nurses as well as talatis have become more regular with their village visits. Manjula Tadvi, a health worker in Bharosewadi village, recounts an interesting spin-off after a year-long exercise.

''We needed to fill up below poverty line (BPL) forms. The talati himself came and gave me the forms for all the villagers and now listens to us. Earlier, we had to go searching for him,'' said Tadvi.

Also, with the emergency mobile number for seeking ambulance services jointly run by Deepak Foundation and the state health department displayed on each of these paintings, the number of emergency calls have gone up wherein ambulances take expectant mothers to government or private hospitals in record time. This helps to reduce both maternal and infant mortality rates.

''We wanted to create demand for the government health services, and also build up community pressure. The idea is to have more deliveries in hospitals instead of at home, which remains one of the major reasons for maternal mortality,'' said Joshi.

With details of mother and child check-ups going public, it is also creating awareness in the region amongst tribal mothers to seek timely professional medical help. Also, with parallel compilation of the data, the aanganwadi worker has become more particular as both the data are compared and cross-checked in government health meetings too.

Vadodara District Development Officer (DDO) M Thennaresan said, ''The demand for emergency services has picked up. Also, it has given the village community monitoring powers over the system.'