Digital Communication Transforming Family Health In Africa

Mobile phones have in recent years changed the ways institutions deal with citizens or tackle issues. Some individuals have taken advantage of the availability of these phones to help tackle some social problems.

Over 7000 women die per year in Cameroon from pregnancy related complications which can be prevented by a simple educative SMS.

GiftedMom notifies women who have subscribed to the SMS platform on when they should do their antenatal care and tells them the importance of going for check-up

GiftedMom was developed by Alain Nteff at the age of 20. He was alarmed by the high infant and maternal mortality rate in his community; hence he tried to come up with a solution. At his young age, he was able to discover that many Cameroonians lack access to prenatal and antenatal care.

The app offers services such as vaccination tracker, breastfeeding information and general antenatal care

GiftedMom currently impacts over 6000 users in Cameroon, Mali & Niger

Alain Nteff has been named CNN & Forbes Africa 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs and was awarded the first ever Queen’s Young Leaders Award by Queen Elizabeth II as GiftedMom targets over 5 million pregnant women and mothers across Africa by 2018.

Is a social enterprise that aims at using  technology to reduce maternal and new-born mortality rate and to reduce new-borns’ developmental disability.

Totohealth uses an automated SMS and web-based platform that contains a database of maternal, new-born and child health related messages.

The SMS and Voice content is sent to mothers and fathers based on the age of the child as well the pregnancy stage of the mother. This allows Totohealth to deliver more targeted and timely information.

The messages help in monitoring pregnancy /child growth to enable parents seek early intervention case of problems, give timely advice specific to child or pregnancy, and get referral to the right healthcare facilities and to give a platform to ask questions about pregnancy directly from mobile phone.

The application has mostly helped change the lives of women living in the slum areas.