Deepak Foundation, a corporate social responsibility outfit of Deepak Group of Companies, was set up in 1982 with the dream of providing medical and healthcare facilities to the workers and local community near the Nandesari industrial area.

The focus was to reach out to the most vulnerable population groups i.e. women and children belonging to poor families. The Foundation has since evolved into a leading non-profit organization providing maternal and childcare services to over 2 million people across 1548 villages in all twelve blocks of Vadodara district, Gujarat.

Deepak Foundation’s activities have been devoted primarily to strengthening the public health delivery system, and maintaining an effective monitoring and evaluation system. The Safe Motherhood and Child Survival (SCMS) project, conducted from 2005 to 2011, included a comprehensive Computerised Management Information System (CMIS) as one of its core components, which allowed for the continuous and systematic tracking of more than 200 000 pregnant and nursing mothers. The CMIS collected the following information from every pregnant woman, and every woman with a child less than 1 year of age; antenatal clinic visit details, delivery and immediate post-delivery details (type of delivery, weight of newborn, immediate breast feeding, emergency referral etc), and post natal details until 42 days after delivery (referrals, illnesses in baby/mother, immunization).

With the end of the Safe Motherhood and Child Survival (SMCS) project, Deepak Foundation is moving in a more research-oriented direction and has just initiated a Demographic Surveillance System (DSS). Its objective is to collect longitudinal data on maternal and child health in the Vadodara and Waghodia blocks of Vadodara...