Deploying Mobile phone Technology to enhance access to antenatal and neonatal care in rural communities(Tuesday, February 7, 2012 )

Story: Benjamin Xornam Glover, Busongo In an effort to bridge the gap between community health workers and patients, the Ghana Health Service is putting in place steps to upscale how best to use mobile phones to increase the quality and quantity of antenatal and neonatal care in rural communities in Ghana. The Mobile Technology for Community Health (MoTeCH) project was founded with the goal of improving the availability of health information for clients and patients as well as health workers in the hope that better information will lead to improved maternal and child health outcomes in rural communities. The project, which has been successfully piloted in the Kassena-Nankana East and West District of the Upper East Region, is a joint initiative between the Ghana Health Service, the Grameen Foundation, and the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health Under the pilot phase which was launched in 2010, health workers used mobile phone to disseminate home-based health education to families and to encourage them to seek pre-pregnancy and child health services. Pregnant women and their partners receive regular, customized messages in voice or text format based on their baby’s due date. Receiving messages is cost-free and clients can access their messages on any mobile phone, whether their personally owned mobile phone of borrowed phone from a family member. In addition to alerts and reminders concerning their clients, health workers also benefitted from the introduction of simplified registers which streamlined the paper based capture and management of health information at the Community-based Health Planning and Services centers in the communities. Thus it provided a standardized format for all Community Health Officers in facilities in the project areas. Speaking at a community durbar at Busongo in the Kassena-Nankana West District to officially mark, the end of the pilot phase of the programme, a Director of Health Information at the Ghana Health Service, Mr. Daniel Darko even before a total national scale up is done, the lessons so far learnt have been imputed into a national policy at the Ghana Health Service Headquarters, in terms of Human Resource Development and Information management. He indicated that the MoTeCH project is currently being replicated in the Ewutu Senya District of the Central Region as a result of the success chalked in the pilot phase in the Kassena-Nankana East and West District of the Upper East Region. The Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams noted the MoTeCH innovation apart from sending regular alerts to clients also has the potential for significantly reducing the amount of time health workers spend writing their reports by hand each month. Dr. Awoonor-Williams said aside the benefits, implementers also took note of some of the challenges encountered during the pilot stages such as poor network coverage and limited access to mobile phones in some areas, the need for pay greater attention in explaining to clients the steps for contacting MoTeCH to access their messages and also facilitiating mobile phone access for clients. On the health worker side, another challenge experienced was in the area of capturing all the relevant data in the mobile phones due to heavy workloads and under staffing. These issues he said have been fully noted and will be addressed in future iterations of the project. The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr. Mark Woyongo commended the various partners for harnessing the increasing widespread of mobile phone usage to help people especially those in remote areas to access quality health services which can lead to improve health, increase prosperity and reduce poverty. Mr. Woyongo said he was convinced that the MoTeCH intervention will make an impact on the maternal and child mortality in the region and expressed the hope that the technology will be deployed to other parts of the region and nationwide. The District Chief Executive for Kassena-Nankana West, Mr. Thomas Dalu Addah said administrative data shows that the MoTeCH and other programmes initiated in the district brought improvement in skills delivery from 42 per cent to 52 per cent and post natal registrants from 26.9 per cent to 63 per cent. He also pledged the assembly’s commitment to continue to support initiatives that will bring relief to the people. Representatives of the Grameen Foundation, and the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Ms Jacqueline Molla Larsen and Ms Allison Stone both commended partners for the successful piloting of the project in the Kassena-Nankana East and West Districts and expressed that hope that the lessons learnt during the initial phase will be used in the future to make the MoTeCH system even more beneficial for its target groups. -End-