Mothers in Mali Battle against Malaria with Mobile Phones

Mobile phones will be used by the mother health workers to register data from the neighbourhood about malaria, but also about pregnancy for instance. With mobile phones, the health workers visit households. They then use the mobiles to fill in the answers they get from standard questions, plus some other details. For instance how many people live in the house, how many people are ill and what is the number of newborns. 

The data can then be sent to a hospital to be stored in a health database. With the database, organisations can see exactly how many people live in certain areas. In the past, it was always difficult to make estimates of how many insecticide-treated nets were needed in the poor areas in Bamako and often too few nets were distributed by governments or aid organisations. 

For hospitals, not only easier access to general statistics is an advantage of the mobile system, they also are able to get better information per patient. The system will be also linked to an individual client number so patient history will be more accurate. 

For the health workers the advantage of this system is that data has fewer chance to get lost. There’s also a stronger link between the hospital and the health workers so it gets easier to direct patients to the hospitals. 

The mothers participating in the project are trained health workers who are trusted in the community. The health workers also have the trust of women in the community, who wouldn’t normally visit a hospital. In addition, the mothers also have a good knowledge of the neighbourhood they work in.

The mobiles against malaria project was one of the IICD-supported projects present at Dutch summer festival ‘The Parade’ in 2011 and money can also be donated through an online donation platform. A larger campaign around this project was launched in the fall of 2011.