Dialing for Health in Africa

This brief article explores trends in the use of mobile phones as a strategy for tracking epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and for facilitating the provision of health care, with a focus on Rwanda.

As author Manasee Wagh explains, Rwanda is a country with approximately 9 million people - of which nearly 200,000 are infected with HIV - yet unreliable internet connections make it difficult to track the spread of epidemics like this one. Since about 60% of the population of Africa lives in areas with mobile phone coverage (a figure that Wagh predicts will climb to 85% by 2010), mobile telephony appears to be a promising direction on this continent for "supporting the development of a national health information system". These are the words of an official from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), one of the organisations taking part in the Phones-for-Health partnership, which draws on mobile phones as a means to enter medical data. By using mobile phones and software developed for the project, medical clinics in Rwanda will communicate patient information, order medicine, and receive treatment information.

The project was tested in September 2006 but is not yet up and running; organisers are currently distributing handsets; they plan to set up next in Nigeria, and expand to 10 developing countries in the next 3 years. According to Phones-for-Health officials, there will be challenges in moving forward - but technology is not one of them. Rather, focus is being placed on raising awareness on the part of intended users of the system as to the value that this information and communication technology (ICT) can hold in terms of addressing their health needs.