IRH’s ‘CycleTel’ highlighted in NYT article on India’s virtual middle class

In Thomas Friedman’s column under the New York Times Opinion, he describes his first encounter with the “virtual middle class” during a trip to India in his article, “The Virtual Middle Class Rises.”

During his trip, the USAID mission in New Delhi connected Friedman with several Indian social entrepreneurs and their innovations that are supported by the United States. He describes the power of the tools that are now in the hands of India’s virtual middle class—including CycleTel™, IRH’s SMS mhealth service that enables women to use the Standard Days Method^® of family planning via mobile phones—as “jaw-dropping.”

Listing several of the innovations, he describes CycleTel, saying “the Institute for Reproductive Health is alerting women of their fertile days each month with text messages, indicating when unprotected sex should be avoided to prevent unwanted pregnancies.”

[Read the full article here]