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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-25 09:50
The UN and Vodafone also released a study, mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World, detailing 51 programs in 26 countries. The biggest adopters are India with 11 projects and South Africa and Uganda with six each. "Innovative technology could reduce the pressure on public healthcare systems," Daniel Carucci, vice-president of health at the UN Foundation, says. In Uganda, for example, a multiple choice quiz about HIV/AIDS was sent to 15,000 subscribers on the Celtel network in a rural region, inviting them to answer questions and seek tests. Users who completed the quiz were given free airtime and each time they answered a question wrong they received a message informing them of the correct response. At the end of the quiz, a final SMS was sent to motivate participants to go for voluntary testing and counseling at a local health center. Slightly less than one in five responded and the number of people who went for testing at the center increased from 1,000 to 1,400 during a six-week period, the report says. In another example given in the report, health workers in the Amazonas state of Brazil began filling in surveys last October on their mobile phones on incidences of the mosquito-borne dengue fever. "The devices are providing us with precision (and) the information we need to develop (effective responses) in the areas where the infection levels are high," Luzia de Melo Mustafa, an Amazonas health agent was quoted as saying. In Mexico, a medical hotline called MedicallHome was launched in 1998 to provide for people without access to a doctor. They can ring or send an SMS to ask for advice. |
