[UgaBYTES] Fighting Disease through ICT

[Mwathi Francis]

The phenomenal growth of mobile telephony across Africa has improved
communication, spurred commerce and opened up remote regions.
Now, the technology could become the weapon of choice to fight one of
the continent's most intractable problems -- disease. In the latest
health initiative to tap into ICT, Technology Partnership -- a joint
venture between the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone
Foundation-- has announced the expansion of its mobile health
programme to help far-flung health workers share critical data.
The partnership between the UN and Vodafone foundations was created in
October 2005, with a £10 million ($20 million) commitment from the
latter matched by £5 million ($10 million) from the UN body.
Through the project, the two organisations and the World Health
Organisation will expand the use of an open-source application known
as EpiSurveyor to 22 African countries by the end of this year.
EpiSurveyor was developed by the non-profit organisation,
DataDyne.org, and can be downloaded to handheld devices such as mobile
phones, enabling healthcare workers to track data.
The system has already been pilot-tested in Kenya and Zambia. Rolling
it out to all 22 target countries is expected to cost $2 million.
"EpiSurveyor allows health workers in urban as well as rural areas to
easily collect manage and share clean and timely programme-monitoring
data," said Dr Balcha Girma Masresha, medical officer in the
immunisation programme in the African Region of the WHO.
"The introduction of this technology is enabling health workers to
better understand and identify the strengths and shortcomings of their
programmes, so that they can actively work toward continuous
improvement."
Since last year, health workers from Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Benin,
Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Madagascar and
Senegal have been trained to use EpiSurveyor. "Technology has a major
role to play in enabling the international community to meet the UN
Millennium Development Goals for health, including reducing child and
maternal mortality," said Andrew Dunnett, director of the Vodafone
Foundation in a statement.
The latest initiative underlines the growing role of ICT in medicine
in the region. Last July, the African Medical Research Foundation
(Amref) unveiled a programme to offer continuous medical education
(CME) to 500 nurses at Kenya's main referral medical facility, the
Kenyatta National Hospital through its Virtual Nursing School.
In the course of the five-year programme, Amref will use
computer-based modules to reach nurses at the institution through
e-learning, helping them upgrade from being enrolled nurses to
registered community health nurses. This way, the nurses will not have
to leave their workstations to undertake CME.

SOURCE: The East African Newspaper

-- 
Francis Mwathi
Assistant Technical Officer
UgaBYTES Initiatives
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