mHealth Project Summary: Bring Healthcare to Kids

Kilifi, Kenya, a region of 740,000 people, is beset by poverty and malnutrition. Chronic malnutrition means that the children of Kilifi will be highly susceptible to diseases like Malaria or TB or diarrhea, and many—thousands of kids per year—are dying because of it.  Health care is difficult in Kilifi especially because of the lack of transportation and isolation that poverty entails.

But technology can help change that: already, cell phones are widespread in the developing world, including Kenya and Kilifi.  They're going to transform how these countries operate.  Already, this is being leveraged to improve health.

Kilifi Kids and Kilifi Rotary Club is working with leaders from UNICEF, Stanford University and the Millennium Villages Project to bring education through text messaging to mothers of malnourished children and to literally change the way health workers in Kilifi provide care to sick and healthy children.  

Our project will put in place the technology, the computer systems, the training, and the operations expertise, that will improve communications surrounding health care and lead to better care in previously isolated regions.  It is the cell phone and the emerging field of mobile health that allow us to do this.

We are looking for partners!  Financial donations are key: we're looking for five to seven clubs to donate $1,000 each.  We're also looking for people to help out—whether you have business expertise or know a thing or two about fundraising or technology or health, we can put your skills to good use.

Mobile Health: Cell Phones + Health

About Mobile Phones in Kenya: Mobile phones are part of our lives, but they're nothing less than a revolution for the world's poor. By 2012, over half the world's population will have access to a mobile phone. All of a sudden, it is possible to communicate with wide ranges of people.

An amazing statistic: according to the UN, there are 4 billion cell phones in the world.  Of that, 2.2 billion are in developing world.  And cell phones have become a tool to save millions of lives.

Road Block in Treatment: Distance and Isolation

Kilifi Rotary Club and Kilifi Kids already is attacking this problem with vigor—Kilifi Rotary has distributed food in a drought, and together, we've invested in 10 new malnutrition clinics and innovative programs to educate mothers.  

It's been said that "Poverty is Isolation."  That is true in Kilifi: while Kilifi has 73 health clinics, a full 57% of the population lives over 3 miles away from their closest clinic.  This creates a problem for health care: it's harder to treat kids weakened by malnourishment, and it's harder to teach healthy practices to Kilifi mothers and other citizens.

That's a big problem.  Cell phones break that isolation.

The Solution: Don't Bring the Kids to the Clinic—Bring the Clinic to the Kids

Our solution is to, in effect, "to bring the mountain to Mohammed."  We're going to be taking the medical care to the kids who need it most.  Our efforts will be through the cell phone.  Cell phone coverage is good in Kilifi: about half the population has access to a phone.  Our project will leverage this asset for health, with cell phone systems developed in Africa in conjunction with leaders from Stanford University, UNICEF, Columbia University and the Millennium Villages Project.  Working off the experience of these partners, there are two sides to our efforts.

1. Education through the air:  We can send health tips and education through text messages to the mothers with cell phones.  Through the Kilifi RC's past experience, we'll be able to target the most at-risk parents.
   
   
2. Redefining how health workers work:  We will be creating a system of cell phone-enabled Community Health Workers, or volunteers who live in a community and are trained by the government.  While there are about 2,000 workers currently in Kilifi, we're going to be redefining how they work and how they deliver services 
   
   We're going to be connecting these workers, even when they're many miles away, to their home base.  For example: 
   
   
   • They're going to be sharing information about their patients—mainly kids who are malnourished—through a text message to the home base and then doctors can tell them what action to take.
     
   • The computers behind the system will be programmed to tell them which of their charges are in the highest risk categories, so they can focus on them. 
   • They can ask their home base for delivery of needed drugs.  
   • The health leaders in Kilifi can find out, by looking at their communications, which health workers are doing their jobs well and which need retraining.
   
   There are many facets to this program.  This system has been put into place already in Malawi and a number of other countries, and the Rotary Club in Kilifi is eager to get started.

The Future: Take this Worldwide

Once we establish a pattern of success in Kilifi, our plan is to package these tools and our experience into an easy-to-use form that other organizations—especially other Rotary Clubs can bring to other communities. Our goal is to establish a business model to ensure sustainable funding of the program once established.

Join Us! We Need Your Help

Kilifi Kids is looking to expand our team. Firstly, we need financial donations: we're looking for five to seven clubs who would be willing to support a great, innovative project, typically for $1,000. We're also on the lookout for architects: people who can lend grant writing help, or entrepreneurship experience, or technology skills or health expertise or anything else you can think of. Please let us know!