Mobile Phone Text Messaging: Tool for Malaria Control in Africa

Abstract

Dejan Zurovac and colleagues discuss six areas where text messaging could improve the delivery of health services and health outcomes in malaria in Africa.

Determinants of readiness to adopt mHealth in a rural community of Bangladesh

“…mHealth, using mobile phone and multimedia technologies, has been successfully used, particularly in resource-poor settings, to increase access to primary healthcare, real time diagnosis and treathttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2015.06.008 1386-5056/© 2015 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. ment, health education, emergency medical response, and data collection in disease surveillance [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Evidence in favor of its usefulness is accumulating.…”

“…The mHealth platform is an inexpensive health services delivery mode for direct consultations with healthcare professionals; text message reminders for medication adherence, healthcare worker adherence to guidelines, post-treatment attendance and real-time SMS tracking of newborns in resource poor setting [6,7,10,27,28]. Like other developing countries, the mHealth services of Bangladesh uses text messages, direct consultations over mobile phones, interactive voice response (IVR) systems and video conferencing [25,26].…”

Challenges in the Management of Malaria in Nigeria: A Healthcare System Preview

“…Few initiatives have been introduced using several IT platforms and with the aid of established initiatives by pharmaceutical companies such as SMS for life and introducing new platforms and technologies would benefit the national vision to have malaria free Nigeria [5,13,14]. Table 3: Long term plan.…”

Mitigating the threat of artemisinin resistance in Africa: improvement of drug-resistance surveillance and response systems

“…Improvement of patients' awareness about the need to confirm a malaria-free status after treatment might be achieved through the use of innovative approaches, such as mobile phone text messages with reminders to attend follow-up sessions. 70,71 Another metric worthy of increased attention during intensive malaria surveillance is the proportion of patients who need rescue therapy. These adaptations, together with new ways to document treatment successes, could form the basis of pragmatic early warning systems that allow further investigation.…”