Tuesday, September 07, 2010

M4D: THE CASE FOR MALAWI

Abstract
Malawi has a population of about 14 million and currently has 5 telecommunication players and actively being serviced by two mobile network operators, namely TNM and Zain. G-Mobile is yet to roll out its services by January 2011. The country has 2.9 million mobile subscribers, 100,000 people have access to fixed lines and close to 1% of the population has access to Internet backed by 2 fiber optic backbones [1]. In 2009, the telecommunications industry contributed 7% to the country’s GDP. By end of 2010, penetration rates will be at 27% for mobile, fixed at 2.4% and Internet will be at 4.4% [2]. The paper highlights some major strides and other work in progress that the country has embarked upon in its quest towards Mobile for Development initiatives and areas that need to be looked at to meet the estimates as well as the three targets under MDG 8.
THE IMPACT AND SUSTAINABILITY OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGY FOR HEALTH CARE DELIVERY IN MALAWI

Abstract
Healthcare delivery service in Malawi is being hampered by acute shortage of skilled health workers. This then limits the quality of care given to the patients in terms of obtaining health care advice from upper cadres, communicating vital information to headquarters or even timely request for emergency services like ambulances [1, 2].
In reaction to this in Malawi, UNICEF, Evangelical Association of Malawi (EAM) and FrontlineSMS Medic established mobile technology projects around 2008 as one way of providing communication link between patients at community level and the health facilities. To date, no collective studies have been done to assess their effectiveness and there is no literature that could be used to scale up or replicate these projects.
This study therefore aims at evaluating mobile technology use in these projects as one way of determining if technology implementation in these projects could be utilized as a solution towards low staff levels health facilities are facing as well as its impact towards improvements in data collection and transmission as a way of furthering health service delivery.