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http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/09/saving-the-lives-of-cameroonian-mothers-and-their-babies-with-an-sms/
CAMEROON - SAVING THE LIVES OF
MOTHERS & THEIR BABIES WITH AN SMS
- “You can’t measure the joy in my heart,” Marceline Duba,
from Lagdo in Cameroon’s Far North Region, tells IPS as she holds her grandson
in her arms. “I am pretty sure we could have lost this child, and perhaps
my daughter, if this medical doctor hadn’t shown up,” Duba says, a smile
sweeping her face.
The medic in question is Dr Patrick Okwen. He is
the coordinator of M-Health, a project sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
that uses mobile technology to increase access to healthcare services to
communities “when they most need it.”
The World Health
Organisation (WHO) recommends that a nurse or doctor should see a maximum
of 10 patients a day. But according to Tetanye Ekoe, the vice president of the
National Order of Medical Doctors in Cameroon, “the doctor-to-patient ratio in
Cameroon stands at one doctor per 40,000 inhabitants, and in remote areas such
as the Far North and Eastern Regions, the ratio is closer to one doctor per
50,000 inhabitants.”
Okwen and the medical staff at the Lagdo District
Hospital received an SMS from Aishatou. She had been in labour for 48 hours
with no signs that the baby was about to come.
“What happens when a woman SMSes a particular
number, the GPS location blinks on the server, and then the server tries to
identify her location, puts it on Google maps; then tells the driver to go
there. [The system] also tells the doctor to come to the hospital; tells the
nurses to get ready. So everybody gets into motion,” he tells IPS.
Okwen and the ambulance driver traced Aishatou to
her home. They found her lying helpless on a mat, almost passed out. By the
time the ambulance returned to the hospital, the operation room was ready for
her and she was taken into surgery immediately.
Eight minutes later, her 4.71 kg baby boy was
born. The midwife Manou nee Djakaou tells IPS: “The joy in me is so great
that I don’t even know how to express it. I am so exited; very happy. This
system put in place is very efficient. But for this innovation, we stood to
lose this baby and its mother.”
Two hours after surgery, Aishatou regained
consciousness and named her boy after Okwen.
Forty percent of women in Cameroon’s Far North
Region lose their lives while giving birth, according to the WHO.
According to the U.N.
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), out of every 100,000 live births 670 women in
Cameroon die. UNICEF figures also state that for every 1,000 live
births, 61 infants died in Cameroon in 2012.
“Many women are dying from child-birth related
issues. Women are dying while giving life. And this is something we are really
concerned about, but we also know that with the coming of mobile technology,
there is hope for women in Africa,” Okwen says.
“Most of the women in Africa today have access to
a telephone. It could be her own, her husband’s own, or a neighbour’s. So if we
had a way in which women could reach an ambulance using a phone that would
guide the ambulance, it could indeed present hope for African women,” he
explains.
Okwen says the project has benefitted “close to one
hundred women in terms of information, evacuation, arrangements of hospital
visits, deliveries and caesarean sections.”
The project has been dubbed “Tsamounde”, which
means hope in the local Fufuldé language.
Mama Abakai, the Mayor of Lagdo, says the project’s
impact has been far reaching.
“A lot of our sisters, wives and mothers in rural
areas lose their lives and suffer a lot, because there is a communication gap,
and a problem of rapid intervention and assistance. With this system, it
suffices to send an SMS or a simple beep, and all the actors involved in saving
lives are mobilised…its formidable,” Abakai tells IPS.
Dr. Martina Baye of Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health
calls the project a “revolution in Cameroon’s health care delivery system.”
She says that as a majority of women in the
country’s far North Region have little access to healthcare services, the
M-Health Project comes as a huge relief.
According to the 2010 Population census, the Far
North Region has a population of three million people, 52 percent of whom are
women.
“We look forward to using this technology in other
parts of the country,” she tells IPS.
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