Is there potential for eHealth and mHealth in Nigeria’s Saving One Million Lives Initiative?

Yesterday, Nigerian President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan launched Saving One Million Lives, an initiative that will aim to improve access to essential primary health services and commodities for Nigeria’s women and children and to save one million lives by 2015. By announcing an official commitment, Nigeria took a bold step and took the lead in achieving the UN Commission on Life-saving Commodities for Women and Children recommendations and implementation plan, issued in New York on 26 September, with the aim of saving more than six million lives of women and children across the world by 2015.

The launch of the Saving One Million Lives initiative was attended by a variety of health stakeholders, including Ministers, Governors, traditional leaders, Nigeria’s private sector health alliance, the Nigeria Development Partners’ Group on Health,  and Nigerian midwives, the unsung heroines at the frontline of saving the lives of women and children.

Dr Craig Friderichs, Director of Health at GSMA, also attended the launch as a PMNCH Board member.

One of the questions addressed during the launch was the role of ICT in the initiative: Is there potential for eHealth and mHealth?

In the recent landscape of mHealth products and services in Nigeria, the GSMA identified 15 mHealth services [1], covering three mHealth categories: Prevention, Health Systems Strengthening and Health Worker Empowerment, with the main medical need addressing maternal, newborn and child health,  especially with mobile operator Etisalat’s service Mobile Baby [2].

Since its launch, Etisalat’s Mobile Baby has fully trained over 500 birth attendants and midwives and registered over 10,000 pregnant ladies in the program. Similar to other markets, mHealth services in Nigeria are still in its infancy, with most of the mHealth services being recently launched and still in pilot phase.

With network coverage throughout the country and with 62% mobile penetration [3], the GSMA believes that with innovative approaches, scaled and sustainable implementation of mHealth services and products can be achieved!

Can the GSMA play the role?

The GSMA identified Nigeria as one of the pilot countries for its Pan African mHealth Initiative through which it will aim to reduce fragmentation of mHealth services by creating a collaborative and integrative business framework, support implementation of scaled service, develop replicated business framework and align health and mobile industries around common goals.

While the result of the Pan African mHealth Initiative is yet to be seen, with the next phase of the initiative ending in February 2013,  we will be sure to keep you updated on the initiative, and on Nigeria as a pilot country.

For more information on the Pan African mHealth Initiative and National Repositories of Information, please contact us on mhealth@gsm.org.