Ministry Of Public Health: Immunity Charm

Credits & Description:

Title: Immunity Charm
Agency: Mccann Worldgroup India, Mccann Health
Brand: Ministry Of Public Health, Islamic Republic Of Afghanistan
Country: India
Entrant Company: Mccann Health, New Delhi
Advertising Agency: Mccann Worldgroup India, Mumbai / Mccann Health, New Delhi
Media Agency: Mccann Health, New Delhi
Production Company: Mccann Health, New Delhi
Additional Company: Global Health Consulting, Washington
Executive Chairman & Regional Ed Ap: Prasoon Joshi (Mccann World Group)
National Creative Director: Prateek Bhardwaj (Mccann Worldgroup)
Senior Vice President & Country Head (India): Dr. Harshit Jain (Mccann Health)
Account Director: Kamya Elawadhi (Mccann Health)
Creative Director: Soumya Shiva Nagabhushan (Mccann Worldgroup)
Senior Medical Advisor: Dr. Daniel J Carucci (Mccann Global Health)
President, Mccann Global Health: Andrew Schirmer (Mccann Health)
Copywriter: Urvashi Das (Mccann Worldgroup)
Creative Team Leader: Vaibhava Bhatnagar (Mccann Worldgroup)
Synopsis:
Remote areas, illiteracy, and traditional biases against vaccines, mean Afghanistan has a vaccination completion rate of just 50%. Doctors face a lack of immunization history as parents do not maintain vaccination cards. We needed the people of Afghanistan to understand the importance of immunization and help them complete their child's immunization.
Audience:
The target audience were doctors, healthcare professionals, vaccinators and parents of children receiving the vaccination.
Outcome:
Afghanistan's vaccination completion rate is just 50%, and infant mortality rate is 101 out of every 1000 live births.As the Immunity Charm spreads across various Afghan provinces, it helps thousands of infants complete their vaccination schedule.This is a unique case of collecting data and then using that same data as incentive!
Brief with projected outcomes:
The Immunity Charm is a project run by the Ministry of Public Health, Afghanistan, so it follows strict adherence to vaccination guidelines and child care protocols in the country. But traditional biases against vaccines was the bigger challenge.
Relevancy:
The Immunity Charm is the immunization history of a child, worn by the child. It creates a direct relationship between infants' doctors and the parents. Borrowing from an Afghan tradition itself, we modified the evil eye charm, commonly found on an infant's wrist, as our medium to spread the message of immunization amongst various Afghan communities. The charm is not merely for the purpose record keeping of vaccines but also incentivizes parents to follow up on their child's immunization.
Execution:
Doctors and Healthcare professionals were given their own Immunity Charm Kits and required just a one hour training program.With each kit a doctor is equipped to take care of 50 children's Immunization records.In the pilot programme, we have begun in Kabul district with 10 kits, which brings 500 children under monitoring. Seeing the success of the programme, the Immunity Charm is being extended to other provinces. The immunity charm itself comprises colored beads, with each bead being code for a specific vaccine. On every vaccine, doctors add the corresponding bead to the bracelet.
Strategy:
The strategy was to incentivize Afghans to maintain data on vaccination. In a society with traditional biases against vaccination, this was no easy task.The Immunity Charm used another Afghan tradition to tackle traditional biases - an evil eye bracelet that is put on Afghan new borns.By codifying the beads on the bracelet, doctors have created an incentive for Afghan mothers to maintain immunization history. On every vaccine given, the doctor adds a specific colored bead to the bracelet, building up the immunization history data on the child's wrist. This data can be easily interpreted by other doctors when they see the bracelet.
Campaign Description:
To counter these traditional biases, we turned to another Afghan tradition. A bracelet that is tied on infants to ward off evil forces, now also protects them from diseases.