Kenya is among countries recognised for innovations that have helped reduce maternal and child mortality.
Safaricom’s Jamii Smart clinical alerts and the HELP SMS Platform have been praised for relaying timely information to expectant mothers and community health workers, potentially averting deaths and complications.
Safaricom uses the Jamii Smart app to send alerts and reminders to mothers and health workers regarding clinic visits, expected delivery dates, immunisation schedules and other information.
The contribution is praised in the 2010-2015 progress report of the Every Woman Every Child (EWEC), a global movement launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2010 to drastically stop deaths of at least 16 million women and children by 2015.
“As a result of this system, more mothers in Kenya are now attending more antenatal visits and are able to opt for a skilled birth procedure through micro insurance schemes,” says the report, Saving Lives, Protecting Futures, released last week.
Safaricom also supports the Health Enablement and Learning Platform (HELP), a health information delivery app that has already served 30 000 families and is now being scaled up to reach 300,000 families.
“In Kenya we have one doctor for every 10,000 patients. Bearing in mind that we have more than 25 million mobile phones and less than 450 hospitals, it goes without saying that mobile technology should be used to create effective solutions for our healthcare challenges,” says Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore.
The EWEC is currently the fastest growing global public health partnership in history, attracting $60 billion in resources. Some $34 billion, nearly 60 percent of the total, has already been disbursed.
Safaricom is one of the more than 300 partners globally who have pledged more than 400 commitments. First Lady Margaret Kenyatta has also made commitments through the Beyond Zero campaign.
Kenya’s under-five mortality for every 1,000 births has reduced by the 11.1 per cent while maternal mortality has reduced by 13 per cent between 2010 and 2015.