Alain Nteff leads fight against maternal mortality

Like many 23-year-olds, Alain Nteff has big dreams. What sets him apart from most, however, is what he's actually trying to achieve: wiping out maternal mortality.

The Cameroonian entrepreneur is the co-founder of Gifted Mom, a mobile health platform that uses low-cost technology to help mothers and pregnant women access medical advice in out-of-the-way, rural communities.

His invention landed him an invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, where he was one of this year's Global Shapers, a group of 20 to 30-year-olds who are tipped for future leadership roles. He was also the youngest participant.

The seed for the Gifted Mom idea was planted in 2012 when Nteff, then a 20-year-old engineering student, visited a hospital in rural Cameroon where his friend Conrad Tankou was doing his medical practice. There he witnessed several mothers and newborns die from conditions that could have been predicted and managed with proper antenatal care.

Nteff was deeply affected by what he saw, and together with Tankou started thinking of ways in which they could use their skills to tackle the issue of maternal and infant mortality.

The problem of maternal and infant death is not a woman issue -- it's a humanitarian issue. Everybody should take seriously. We all have mothers, we all have sisters, and it's not just a problem for women or girls.

Alain Nteff "I'm passionate about using technology to solve problems in my community, and I just saw it as an opportunity to apply my engineering to solve one of the world's biggest and oldest problems," says Nteff.

Low-cost, far reach His answer was to create an SMS service that expectant and new mothers could register for to receive advice about their health, including why it's important to have regular check-ups: "We realized that there was a need to create a low cost channel to educate women on when they should go for antenatal care and when they should take their babies for vaccination," says the entrepreneur.

Initially only eight women signed up, but through word-of-mouth the reputation of Gifted Mom grew, and today the service has 2,100 subscribers across the whole country.

Registering is easy -- a woman just has to text MOM to 8006 to receive a call back and get help signing up. Or, she can text a particular health question to the same number and get a reply from a doctor. Gifted Mom works with the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, a USAID-backed movement that uses mobile technology to improve maternal health in the developing world, and a team of medical doctors led by Tankou to find answers to the queries.

"The SMS we sent to the first pregnant woman was special -- she said that when she read it she felt so much joy, and she was telling me 'I feel now that somebody's got my back,'" says Nteff.

We realized that there was a need to create a low-cost channel to educate women on when they should go for antenatal care and when they should take their babies for vaccination.

Alain Nteff There is a one-off subscription fee of less than one dollar, but all subsequent messages which include alerts for when vaccinations for newborns are due, are free. In order to include the roughly 17% of Cameroonian women who are illiterate, the Gifted Mom team are also developing voice technology in four widely spoken traditional languages.

Last September, Nteff was named the grand prize winner of the $25,000 Anzisha Prize, a pan-African award celebrating entrepreneurs aged 15-22 who've come up with innovative ways to solve problems in their communities, or have launched successful businesses in their areas.

"The message I am trying to send out with my team is that the problem of maternal and infant death is not a woman issue -- it's a humanitarian issue," he says. "Everybody should take [it] seriously -- we all have mothers, we all have sisters, and it's not just a problem for women or girls.