I am just back from Mobile 360 Africa which took place in Cape Town last week, and am reflecting on how energising it was to meet many mHealth stakeholders in one place and get the chance to catch up through formal congress sessions and informal conversations.
While the central focus of the mHealth programme is nutrition and maternal, newborn and child health, since the outbreak of Ebola we have, along with the Disaster Response team, dedicated additional time and effort to a mobile response to this deadly disease across the affected countries of Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, centred on three activity phases:
- Provide a mobile based information product with credible, validated and endorsed local content, approved by the World Health Organization, that links to country specific response protocols
- Provide anonymised data from mobile operator call data records (CDR) for disease tracking and response
- Provide health worker mHealth services customised for each country’s needs
Since the start of the outbreak the GSMA has been both proactively driving and supporting cross-organisational efforts to respond to the Ebola crisis.
We have released an Ebola Mobile Response Blueprint, intended to be adopted as best practise by mobile operators and the Ministries of Health in the affected countries. The Ebola Mobile Response video sets out the response of the mobile industry to date, in the area of credible and endorsed messaging.
Mobile 360 Africa provided a valuable opportunity to gather stakeholders together for the session entitled “Responding to Ebola” and discuss efforts to date, which have thrown up many insights –
- Being prepared is crucial. The best strategy is to establish an engaged user base of citizens when there is no crisis. This ensures that when/if a crisis strikes the user base is receptive to key messaging to help alleviate the crisis. The mind-set of mobile operators is increasingly to prepare dependable and predictable tools and platforms for different eventualities that can affect large groups of their subscribers.
- Young people are key. Young people make up the majority of the populations of the affected countries. If the young are engaged, the reach of an mHealth service is extended. Awareness can be increased using many innovative methods on mobile, including entertainment.
- Mobile is an important tool in times of crisis. On its own mobile will not stem the Ebola outbreak, but in partnership with other organisations mobile operators can leverage their assets (such as SMS, IVR, payments, reach, customers and branding) to become an important part of the solution.
- Mobile provides health information on demand, as opposed to radio and television, which, while very effective at diffusing messages, are not responsive to the particular needs of a particular person at a particular time.
- There have been many requests fielded by the GSMA to link mobile payments to mHealth, demonstrating scope for payments for burials along with payments to health workers that are treating patients in affected areas.
- While many international organisations have flooded into the epicentres with offers of help, it is important to place the local Ministry of Health firmly at the centre of decision making. Governments have the final decision in health systems that will prevail beyond the current outbreak and are currently focused on
- Reducing transmission by empowering health workers with tools including treatment guidelines and reporting
- Reducing mortality by delivering best practice for diagnostics and patient monitoring
- Increasing community engagement, building trust through direct Ebola messaging services, surveys and distribution of credible, endorsed World Health Organisation information
For more information on GSMA Mobile for Development mHealth, please see here or contact us on mhealth@gsma.com. For information on global mHealth initiatives, click here.