$10m Phone Deal to Fight Aids in Africa

July 10, 2007

East African Business Week (Kampala)

NEWS

9 July 2007

Posted to the web 9 July 2007

By Bosco Hitimana

Kigali

The U.S. Government and leading global players in the mobile phone

industry have joined forces to fight HIV/AIDS and other health

challenges in 10 African countries.

'Phones for Health' is a US$10million public-private partnership

which brings together mobile phone operators, handset manufacturers

and technology companies.

They work in close collaboration with the ministries of Health,

global health organizations, and other partners to use the widespread

and increasing mobile phone coverage in the developing world to

strengthen health systems.

It was officially launched at the 3rd GSM World Congress held in

Barcelona on February 13 this year.

Phones for health partners that include the GSM Association's

Development Fund, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

(PEPFAR), Accenture Development Partnerships, Motorola, MTN and

Voxiva met at the recently concluded global HIV implementers' meeting

held in Kigali, Rwanda from June 16-19.

The MTN Rwanda Chief Operations Officer (COO), Mr. Rugege said

MTN works with Rwanda's Treatment and AIDS Research Center (TRAC) in

its TRACnet system to collect HIV/AIDS information using data and

voice technologies.

" Phones for health help us as producers to give something back to our

communities. It is value added to us because a healthy person makes a

healthy market " , Rugege said.

MTN provides toll-free phones that help Rwanda's TRACnet to receive

and disseminate information from upcountry health centers through the

TRACnet system.

He informed participants that MTN Rwanda will very soon sign a

contract with the ministry of health to provide internet connectivity

to health service providers in Rwanda.

The chief executive officer (CEO) of Voxiva Mr. Meyer and the

manager of GSM Association Development Fund Ms. Dawn Hartley showed

that there are 1.8 billion phones in the developing world and 1

million new phones are purchased each day.

The use of phones in the health sector is of vital importance once it

is decentralised in all possible daily tasks in the fight against the

HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Rwanda's TRACnet system that was installed by Voxiva two years ago

was hailed at the meeting. The director general of TRAC Ms. Anita

Asiimwe revealed that the performance of TRACnet in collection,

storage, retrieval, and dissemination of critical information related

to HIV/AIDS care and treatment in the whole country is of vital

importance.

Phones for Health will allow health workers in the field to use a

standard Motorola handset equipped with a downloadable application to

enter health data. Once entered, the data is transferred via a packet

based mobile connection known as General Packet Radio System (GPRS)

into a central database. If GPRS isn't available, the software can

use a SMS data channel to transmit the information. The data is then

mapped and analyzed by the system, and is immediately available to

health authorities at multiple levels via the web.

The system also supports SMS alerting and other tools for

communication with field staff.

Phones for Health aims at developing an integrated set of standard

information solutions which support the scale-up of HIV/AIDS,

Tuberculosis, Malaria and other health programs.

The partnership seeks to speed up the use of mobile phones for actual

time data capture and deliver solutions to developing countries in

ways that are cost-effective, manageable and sustainable.

This will help in building the foundation for national Health

Management Information Systems (HMIS).

July 10, 2007