Old Cell Phones Support Health Care in Malawi

Text Messages Reach Remote Patients and Revolutionize Healthcare

Oct 29, 2009

"Mobiles in Malawi" is an extremely low-cost program that uses cell phones and open source software to cut the distance between patients, caregivers and medical clinics.

St. Gabriel's Hospital in Namitete, serves over 250,000 Malawians dispersed over a 100-mile radius in every direction. The town is located 60 km from Lilongwe in the Central Region district of Malawi. The hospital has only two doctors and relies on more than 400 volunteer community health workers to support remote patients. Health workers and patients walk long distances to get to and from the hospital; those with more resources ride motorbikes, bicycles or oxcarts.

Without Cell Phones Community Health Workers Were Isolated

When Josh Nesbit, a Senior in the Human Biology Program at Stanford University, volunteered with the mobile HIV testing unit at St. Gabriel in 2007, he met a community health worker who kept handwritten drug adherence charts for HIV-patients. To report back to nurses in the clinic, he had to walk 30 miles each way. What if the health worker could send a simple text message instead?

Pilot Project "Mobiles in Malawi"

Back in California, Nesbit met Ken Banks, the founder of FrontlineSMS, a free mobile communications organization for nonprofits. FrontlineSMS had not been used in the health sector, but it seemed like the perfect fit. The program acts as a central text message hub and allows the tracking of patients in a number of programs. In the summer of 2008, Nesbit returned to Malawi with 100 recycled cell phones, a donated laptop and a copy of Frontline SMS. He trained community health workers to use the phones and build their own network.

Text Messages Cut Down Travel Time, Connect Patients and Caregivers

In two months, 75 community health workers received phones and practiced their texting skills. Hospital staff learned to coordinate the health network's activities on a laptop running FrontlineSMS. In only six months the SMS program saved the hospital staff 1,200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel. The program brought emergency medical care to 130 patients who would otherwise have gone unseen and allowed treatment for twice the number of tuberculosis patients. (Feature Project Summary: Mobiles in Malawi)

Texting to Save Lives in Low-Resource Settings

Frontline SMS works well because it uses the resources already available in the country. It does not require new phones, new computers or even a stable internet connection. After he returned from Malawi, Josh Nesbit set himself the ambitious goal to implement the program wherever it is needed. With other recent college graduates he founded the organization FrontlineSMS:Medic. FrontlineSMS:medic is currently partnering with health organizations and NGO's in Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi to assist hospitals in low-resource settings. Earlier this year the organization partnered with Hope Phones to collect old cell phones for medical clinics in the developing world.

The copyright of the article Old Cell Phones Support Health Care in Malawi in World Development is owned by Christine Welter. Permission to republish Old Cell Phones Support Health Care in Malawi in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.