The presentations shares the uses of mHealth applications in Africa

2. According to the WHO statistics report 2014
and Africa regional health report
 The risk of a child dying before their fifth birthday is 8 times higher in the WHO
African Region than a child in the WHO European Region.
 Nearly 800 women die every day due to complications in pregnancy and
childbirth.
 High-income countries have an average of almost 90 nurses and midwives for
every 10 000 people while some low-income countries have fewer than 2 per 10
000 people.
 HIV/AIDS continues to devastate the WHO Africa Region, which has 11% of the
world's population but 60% of the people with HIV/AIDS.

3. M-Health Understanding
 m-Health can be defined as the delivery of
health care services via mobile
communication devices.
 With high mobile penetration and insufficient
infrastructure, the potential impact and
opportunity of successful m-health
applications in the region is high.
 If applied right, mobile solutions can increase
the quality of life for patients and improve the
efficiency of healthcare delivery models and
reduce costs for healthcare providers.

4. According to GSMA, potential in mHealth is in 5
different areas
 Health content
 Registration
 Health Workers
 Supply Chain
 Adherence monitoring

5. mHealth use in service delivery in Africa
Today, The two major innovations in m-health are ;
 Applications that support information dissemination and
 Platforms that support mobile data collection.
However, this trend is recently changing and mobile applications have been
developed in Africa to solve various health issues…..

6. eLENA mobile phone application
 Since 2011, the WHO e-Library of Evidence
for Nutrition Actions (eLENA) has provided
more than 1 million users with evidence-
informed guidance and related information
for nutrition interventions.
 The Nutrition Policy and Scientific Advice
Unit of the WHO Department of Nutrition for
Health and Development developed an
eLENA mobile phone application, this
delivers much of the content of eLENA to
smartphones and can be accessed anywhere
– no internet connection required.

7. Rapidsms
 RapidSMS is a SMS-based framework that
manages data collection, complex workflows,
and group coordination using basic mobile
phones — and can present information on the
internet as soon as it is received.
 RapidSMS is touching the lives of millions
Africa, helping to record births and monitor
distribution of mosquito nets in Nigeria,
monitor neonatal health in Zambia and track
food distribution in the Horn of Africa.
In Rwanda it has cut the death rate among
pregnant women and babies by 50%, by offering
access to emergency care.

8. Text To Change
This was the first interactive SMS campaign with an aim to create
awareness around HIV/AIDS and to stimulate people to get tested.
The campaign was launched on February 14th 2008 in Uganda and
reached 15,000 people. This large-scale mHealth campaign was
one of the first of its kind in Africa. The goal of the campaign was
to get people to go to an HIV/AIDS test center to get tested.

9. Ushahidi
On the field Ushahidi’s
products enable local
observers to submit reports
using their mobile phones or
the internet, while
simultaneously creating a
temporal and geospatial
archive of events.

10. What next for mHealth?
 The future of mobile is bright with major
applications being created by Africans
themselves like WinSenga,Ushahindi,magpi
 However it is also crucial to note that the
impact is yet to be felt for the mHealth
applications.
 A study conducted by the GSMA, reviewing
almost 700 mHealth services, showed that less
than 1% of these significantly impact health
outcomes. Four key barriers were identified –
fragmentation of service delivery, lack of scale
across the full reach of mobile networks,
limited replication and misalignment of the
value proposition between mobile and health
stakeholders.

11. Support and actions to be taken
 Support is needed from various stake holders to eliminate the challenges still
associated with mHealth.
 Accessible simcard technology is of essence to be used to reach the rural locale
as they are mostly deprived of the health services.
 Partnerships with MNOs , government, private sectors and other regulatory
bodies in the mHealth are essential to make progress .
 And most important , Africans have to be empowered to know that Health is a
basic right which needs attention.

12. References
 IT News Africa
http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2013/11/unicef-mobile-innovation-making-impact-in-africa/
 The state of Health care in Africa KPMG 2012
https://www.kpmg.com/Africa/en/IssuesAndInsights/Articles-Publications/Documents/The-State-of-Healthcare-in-Africa.pdf
 GSMA mHealth
http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/programmes/mHealth/programme-overview
 The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa
 Africa Regional Health Report 2014-WHO
 Sida Review Final Report 2010,Johan Hellström
 Technology opens the doors of Africa's health sector
 By Fiona Graham Technology of business reporter, Nairobi and Kampala
 http://www.mHealthafrica.com

13. Created for the GSMA, Mobile
and Socio-Economic
Development course
BY JOYCE NAMBASA