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Monday 16 June 2014

Mobile phones, healthy mothers and healthy babies

The electronic click of a digital camera.

I am examining a 3 year old boy with malaria. I glance up to find myself in the sights of a smartphone camera, held by a tall, slim woman leaning on the next bed. She is from the Masai tribe. Her long purple robe has no pockets, so she strings her phone around her neck when she is not calling, texting, or taking photographs. I catch her eye and smile. She smiles back in embarrassment, caught in this minor invasion of my privacy.

Her daughter has cerebral palsy, caused by a prolonged labour and delay reaching medical help. She has difficult to control convulsions. I exchange numbers with the mother so that we can keep in touch, and I can give advice about epilepsy medication over the phone. Sometimes she can't get to hospital- long distances, bridges washed away by floods, no money for motorbike fuel. 

Its not the first time we have used mobile phones to help patients. When we run out of HIV tests we collect and store blood, perform the tests later and phone results through to patients at home.

Mobile phone ownership has exploded in Tanzania. Nearly 65% of households have one. In comparison, less than 1% read newspapers, have landlines, or internet access. I recently contributed to an article in the Guardian about huge breakthroughs in public health, and I wrote about a campaign using mobile phones. They represent an exciting opportunity to reach people who were otherwise unreachable before, to target people specifically, and also to set up a two way dialogue. Access to communication is a devolution of power.

The world has never known such liberal access to communication. The voiceless now have a voice. The potential benefit to health is huge.


To read the Guardian article in which I've written about using mobile phones to help mothers and babies in Tanzania please see:

Thursday 5 June 2014

Malnutrition in Tanzania: published in The Guardian

I'm humbled that my latest piece of writing has been published in The Guardian.

Please read and share if you feel appropriate. I hope that opening the debate is the first step on the long road to tackling this challenge.