Texts Tackle HIV in South Africa

Project Masiluleke, a text messaging project in South Africa (SA), was set up to try to counter the fact that only 5% of the SA population has been tested for HIV. It intends to tackle the problem of slowing the progress of HIV, in a country with an estimated 6 million people living with HIV, by encouraging people to seek testing and treatment. It is scheduled to send (beginning December 1 2008) one million free text messages a day to push people to be tested and treated. Trials of the system showed that calls to counsellors at the National Aids helpline in Johannesburg increased by 200% when messages were broadcast.


Because there is nearly universal mobile telephone coverage in the country, mobile phones are a central component of how people access information. For that reason, the estimated 43 million phones serving a population of 49 million people will receive a broadcast of several health messages a month using the so-called "Please Call Me" (PCM) service. This form of free text messaging is often used to text message friends asking them to call, particularly when a phone is out of credit to make a call. The PCM message system is usually a caller phone number plus an advertising message of 120 characters to offset the cost of running the service. About 30 million of these messages are sent a day.


In this preventative health application, "[t]exts include: 'Worried that you might have HIV and want to talk to a counsellor about getting tested? Call Aids helpline 0800012322.' Many of the messages have been written with the help of local communities and are broadcast in English and local languages such as Zulu...The system will also eventually be used to provide information about tuberculosis. It has been developed and funded by a group of technology firms such as Nokia Siemens Networks, HIV charities, design firms and educational organisations, such as National Geographic. It was launched at the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine."