Mobile app to curb maternal-neo mortality

In spite of efforts made by the government and different parties to combat the problem of maternal and child mortality, one of the challenges that remain is the inadequate channels to educate pregnant women and new mothers, especially those in rural areas about the available resources. As such the NGO, GiftedMom co-founded by Cameroonians Alain Neff and Conrad Tankou have developed a mobile-based solution-GiftedMom aimed at increasing antenatal care attendance and baby vaccination in Cameroon.

GiftedMom has developed an automated SMS and Voice application that sends notifications to pregnant women and nursing mothers, reminding them on when to go for the next antenatal care session or take their baby for vaccination, respectively. The programme officer of GiftedMom, Dr Agbor Ashu says weekly SMS are sent to subscribers informing them on the available educative medical resources that the Ministry of Public Health and its partners have put in place. Pregnant women or nursing mothers are subscribed to the GiftedMom SMS and Voice Reminder service at hospitals in partnership with GiftedMom or directly to the platform by sending the keyword MOM to 8566.

A subscriber can also send MOM followed by a Question to 8566 and receive instant reply from a medical doctor. Also, GiftedMom has developed a smart phone application for android users that can be downloaded on Google Playstore. This contains health information for pregnancy and baby vaccination. Currently working in 34 communities the country, GiftedMom has impacted the lives of over 10,000 pregnant women and nursing mothers and has directly engaged the husbands of some women as well as community health workers in the fight against maternal and infant deaths.