Malnutrition of children is one of the biggest challenge that the country faces. Despite several special programmes India still has 33 per cent of the malnourished children across the globe. To tackle this grave problem the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) in partnership with HealthPhone and Vodafone, is launching an IAP HealthPhone programme on Tuesday.

It being touted as the world's largest digital mass education programme to eradicate malnutrition from India.

The health app is a public private partnership initiative supported by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and UNICEF.

“India is a country where mobile penetration is wonderful. There could be no better way to educate people. The IAP-HealthPhone India Project will use mobile phones to educate 23 million women between 13 and 65 years of age by 2017 on better nutrition practices and the prevention of child malnutrition. Their family members will also be educated though this app on good health and nutrition practices,” said an official from IAP.

A senior official from women and child development ministry says, “The reasons behind the presence of hunger demon are plenty like the low social status of Indian women. This leads to malnutrition in them and then their children also are not healthy”

The three-year campaign has a simple motto of transforming the lives of Indian women and children. A senior official from MWC ministry says, “This is a fight against malnutrition and is expected to directly benefit the health of 100 million children in India born by 2025.”

The MWCD and UNICEF have jointly produced videos related to nutrition in 18 Indian languages.  This technological effort will be widely promoted by distributing these 37 videos that focuses on the status of women, the care of pregnant women and children under two, breastfeeding and the importance of balanced nutrition and health and simple changes in diet that can notably enhance nutrition levels.

To achieve the desired results IAP has done a partnership with the Vodafone India. These videos will be available free of cost and customers viewing or downloading these videos will receive a talk time incentive of Rs. 10.

The videos will also be promoted by sending out approximately 300 million text messages to Vodafone subscribers every year to promote the viewing of the four videos.

According to the Global Hunger Index 2011 report India ranked 15th amongst leading counties with hunger situation.