Faster Channels of Communication: A Radio and SMS Initiative in NE Kenya
Infoasaid has recently shared some news about an initiative with Save the Children in Wajir, Kenya, which is using FrontlineSMS to communicate with field workers and community representatives. Meanwhile, the radio is being used to share information about health, education and food security. The objective of Infoasaid – a consortium of Internews and the BBC World Service Trust - is to improve how aid agencies communicate with disaster-affected... Read More
Get the Word Out: Using SMS to Support Harm Reduction for Vulnerable Women
Guest post from FrontlineSMS user Gordon Gow, University of Alberta Here at the University of Alberta we are using FrontlineSMS to support graduate student research in communication and technology. Among its range of activities, the Mobile Applications for Research Support (MARS) Lab provides access to FrontlineSMS and mobile phones to allow students and community groups to set up and run pilot projects using text messaging. Among our projects, the... Read More
Using SMS to Help People with HIV in Rural Kenya
Guest post by Ben Parfitt, Ugunja Research Team Making use of available tech in Ugunja. Photo Credit: Ben Parfitt Africa has undergone a mobile revolution, and it is spreading. The health sector is capitalizing on the resulting plethora of new opportunities. Doctors, nurses, health workers and pharmacists often rely on their mobile phones, using them as a reference tool, accessing information otherwise unavailable to them. Among this rapid change,... Read More
Innovation in practice: Family planning via SMS
Florence Scialom, FrontlineSMS Community Support Coordinator, speaks with Esha Kalra, Georgetown University’s Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) Programme Associate Photo credit: Georgetown University Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) It is difficult to bring an innovative idea to life, without first proving its potential in practice; there is a need to demonstrate on a small scale that something actually works before it can make... Read More
Malaria Diagnosis in Real-Time via SMS
Re-posted from the Malaria Consortium blog, with permission from Steve Mellor, Malaria Consortium Systems Manager Malaria Consortium, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded CONTAINMENT Project, is pioneering a Day 3 positive alert system in Ta Sanh district, western Cambodia, using mobile phone and web-based technology (including FrontlineSMS) to facilitate response in real-time. CONTAINMENT’s Sonny Inbaraj reports. Diagram... Read More
Texting for life in Pakistan: the International Organisation of Migration
The International Organisation for Migration, an intergovernmental organisation working to support people to return to their homes after being displaced by disaster of conflict, have been using FrontlineSMS in Pakistan for some months. Below, the twenty-eighth FrontlineSMS guest post is an operational update from Maria Ahmed and Isabel Leigh, in the Mass Communication Team. Beneficiaries of the IOM's work in Ghotki October 15th is Global Handwashing... Read More
White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood: Mum’s Tattoo Parlour at Glastonbury Festival
Our twenty-sixth guest post comes from the lovely James at the White Ribbon Alliance, who piloted FrontlineSMS in campaigning in a particularly innovative and fun bit of awareness-raising – offering free transfer tattoos at Glastonbury Festival… The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood is a coalition of individuals and organisations that campaign to make pregnancy and childbirth safe for all women and newborns. With members in 148... Read More
Jaalaka: Connecting the HIV/AIDS Community through Technology
In the twenty-fourth in our series of guest blog posts, we’ll hear about how FrontlineSMS is helping Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, and a team of students from the University of Southern California, to build a network of people living with HIV/AIDS in India. “Jaalaka” means “network” in Sanskrit. In Hubli-Dharwad, FrontlineSMS technology is being used to connect members of the HIV/AIDS population in a widespread rural network to... Read More
Outreach, health and SMS in Ukraine
Earlier this year, IATP Ukraine launched three pilot projects using FrontlineSMS. In this, the thirteenth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts, Yuriy Selyverstov – the Dnipropetrovsk Representative from the Internet Access and Training Program (IATP) – describes two of the projects Tamarisk, a Ukrainian NGO, plays the key role of resource center for local third sector organisations in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It organises and... Read More
Mapping medicine availability via SMS
Medicine stock-outs are a potentially lethal problem in a number of African countries, yet governments insist they don’t occur. What could be more powerful than a map which contradicts this claim? Last week activists in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia started surveying clinics in their respective countries, checking stock levels of essential medicines, including: First-line anti-malarials Zinc 20mg tablet Penicilin First-line ARVs Metronidazole... Read More
