SMS for Life - Using SMS to save lives in remote locations

Malaria in Tanzania is a vast problem, 93% of the population are at risk of infection with 11 million cases per year and 60-80 thousand deaths per year. Stock outs of malaria drugs are a huge and persistent problem in Tanzania and in many other sub-Saharan African countries. Once drugs are shipped into the country, there is zero visibility on what happens with them.

This video shows how Vodafone mHealth Solutions, Novartis and others are involved in the SMS for Life initiative in Tanzania. It is a pioneering project, in conjunction with Roll Back Malaria, which aims to demonstrate that visibility of weekly stock levels for five selected malaria drugs across three Tanzanian districts will promote action to eliminate and/or reduce stock-outs.

The SMS for life programme has helped Tanzania to manage drug levels in local health facilities, reducing the level of stock-outs from 26% to less than 1%. The solution uses a combination of mobile phones, SMS messages, internet and mapping technology to visualize and report on weekly stock inventory's.

To find out more about Vodafone's pioneering mHealth solutions, please visit http://healthsolutions.vodafone.com/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Vodafone Global Enterprise
• Vodafone mHealth Solutions
• SMS for life
• Stock management
• Novartis
• Roll Back Malaria
• IBM
• dispensary solutions
• stock control
• health facilities
• text reminder
• life saving text
• disease surveillance
• health solutions
• stock updates
• anti-malaria stock
• medicine distribution
• stock-outs health