A Mobile health service(mHealth), which is an innovative Public Private Partnership called Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby SMS Service targeted at bettering the lives of babies and mothers in Tanzania is celebrating 1 million subscriptions.
The mHealth service was initiated in 2012 at Tanzania’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Tanzania with financial support of CDC.
The service recently sent its 55 Millionth free text message with healthcare information for pregnant women, mothers with newborns and male supporters.
The SMS service campaign was set up by the mHealth Tanzania Partnership that includes CDC Foundation for women living in extreme poverty with zero access to medical facilities in Tanzania.
CDC Tanzania office through its website explained that the reasons for the high subscription include the factors about the size of the country which is almost 900,000 square kilometers, it’s population is approaching 44 million and over 25 million are mobile phone subscribers.
Tanzania registers the highest average number of text messages sent per month per subscriber in East Africa. The use of text messaging doubled over the past few years to almost 5 billion messages in 2012.
As a result, mobile telephone technology is recognized by the Ministry of Health as an effective tool to communicate critical healthy pregnancy and safe motherhood information to women and families in even the most remote regions.
Currently, the mHealth Tanzania Partnership is working on expansions, such as enabling two-way communication lending an opportunity to ask questions and give feedback.
Via CIO
