By Winnie Kamau
A mobile phone application to fight Gender Based Violence developed by women from Cote D’ivore recently thrilled participants at a recent data forum in Spain.
The application which has been championed by three women, Dr. Ori Annick Zahui, Apata Rosemonde Boli and Nana Traore who are founders of Mafubo Association a Non Profit Organisation set out to make availability of real time data on health a reality in combating maternal and infant mortality.
The three women who have their strengths drawn from different backgrounds in health sector were part of a contest called Tech Mousso (Technology for Women) organised by Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Data 2X an initiative of the United Nations Foundation (UNF) and the Web Foundation (WF). They who emerged top best out of 80 applicants. Rosemonde Boli, President ,Mafubo Association , explains how they participated in the challenge .“We presented a big project which can change Africa through coming up with solution s to problems in the health sector and at the same time promote introduction of technology and communication in the health system in Africa in order to reduce deaths in pregnant women”. She Adding “ Our project will introduce technology by encouraging taking information of women in the hospital.”
Nana Traore , Gender Advisor , Mafubo Association noted that there was an increase of violence against women which has not been well document in Ivory Coast and so are the mortalities of both infant and maternal. Nana says with the help of the new App Mafubo Med they will help solve this information gap. “We want to make a software to reduce mortality among women . It is very difficult to obtain data in our country and this will permit us to obtain statistics on gender violence and mortality.”She said.
Nnenna Nwakanma of World Web Foundation who was spearheading this project explains how they arrived to the finalists who won 10,000 USD grant. “We first had a workshop with women groups and the ministry of Gender and Statistics. And they gave a chance for interaction where they were able to capture all their needs. A call was made and after training they went out to give more.” The Tech Muoso project saw Mafubo Association emerge winners.” Nnenna continues to take us through the process “ women here are working on is interfacing data from different health institutions and different health personnel that can be available in real time.” adding “They are helping us to map availability capacity and ability to capacity to take care of pregnant women so that when they come to the hospital they will be well received .”
Similarly ,Dr. Annick explains the benefits of their project “We don’t have a complete view of each sector. If we know what’s happening in different hospitals and share information in real time we can help evade this mortality and improve our work in different hospitals.”
Dr. Annick notes “We were moved to start this project by the high maternal mortality yet in Europe they have 0.0001% deaths. If our mothers are well the children can have better education and this will stop the high immigration of our children and death in the Seas looking for better opportunities” Adding “We currently don’t have enough money and we are here to search partners to realize this project but we have started small logistics”.
Mafubo Med APP is expected to cost 3 Euros per person. They are looking to set off with the Application which will help in the collection of data in hospitals through text messages and raising awareness. Rosemonde adds “To realize the project in one area they say they need 500 Million Francs which includes the cost of the servers, computers and the App”.
Currently about 80% of the population has access to mobile phones but internet access is a poses a great challenge in getting real time data in Cote d’ivoire. Nana Toure explains “It is necessary to have statistics of all women and with the help of phones the data will be the success of our project.”
Dr. Annick who has been a practicing gynaecologist for the last 18 years notes “With the phone through the text messages she can be able to know when to see her doctor for antenatal clinics” in addition “If the mother she is due for birth and she needs to go for surgery through the App the doctor can know which hospital is well equipped and has the capacity to receive her. Through our application you will be able to monitor the rate of birth and the rate of death and be able to interact with the data about each hospital”
Another solution that will come with this Application will be able to get the information of the patients forehand describes Nnenna. “There’s another solution which puts anybody’s information on their bracelet, watch or necklace or anything they can wear with a QR code so that all your medical history is all in there. It is controlled so that such data you do not put it up openly. All that the hospital needs to do is to scan the QR code and get access to your medical file.”
At a separate event held in Kenya dubbed Technology for Non Profit Organisations organised by TechSoup, Microsoft and Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF) saw the launch of new technologies that are set to ease the working of startup organisations.
Kunle Awosika, Country Manager-Microsoft Kenya noted with the launch of the new technologies like Complete Cloud there was no need to set up physical servers for organisations as the world is heading to the cloud space for storage. Kunle explains “The Cloud is a hyper scale computing environment which enables the provision of infrastructure like servers. Where we have a firm of servers located in one location which is has huge server rolls and has lots of storage, lots of application being managed in an automated way through data centers you do not have to worry about servers anymore or setting aside budgets for creating websites ,Microsoft has all that solution through office 365”. The service being provided can cost 5$ up to 100$ per month person depending on the plan taken.
It is clear that as some countries have made strides in getting gender data there but there are many more countries who need to tap on this data as a resource and make use of it to alleviate the infant and maternal mortality. Embracing the new technologies will ease also in the cost of getting the data and storing the huge amounts of data gathered.
Over 2000 delegates from all over the world streamed down to Madrid the Capital of Spain for the annual Open Data pilgrimage that was held at the IFEMA recently. The International Open Data Conference (IODC) drew participants from over 100 nations of the world. It is here the three innovative women from Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)set to revolutionize health sector using data thrilled participants with their project.
