HIV/AIDS - African GSM groups, US in $10m deal

February 14, 2007 :: Efem Nkanga ThisDay,Lagos

Ten African countries including Nigeria, are to benefit from a partnership deal worth $10million between the GSM Association, leading players in the mobile telecommunications sector and the United States government to use the mobile phone to combat the HIV/Aids scourge ravaging the globe. The partnership arrangement launched today in Barcelona, Spain, is a public private initiative aimed at bringing together technology companies, handset manufacturers, mobile operators to use the increasing wide mobile phone coverage in the developing world to strengthen health systems and tackle the spread of HIV/Aids and other infectious diseases. Commenting on the initiative, Dr Howard Tucker, Assistant Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), stated that the explosive spread of the mobile phone has created a unique opportunity to transform how countries can tackle health challenges in the developing world like Malaria, Tuberculosis etc. Beyond the initial 10 countries, the partnership, which is building on an already successful deployment to Rwanda, will ultimately extend to other countries in Asia and Africa. The partnership, which currently has as members MTN, Motorola, Voxica, Accenture, GSMA, in partnership with Global health organisations and the United states government through the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids relief (PEPFAR), will deploy its resources to combat the challenge that Aids poses to communities in the developing world. The Aids pandemic is a scourge that is ravaging the African continent with no cure currently in sight. The partnership, through deployment of the "Phones For Health," will allow health workers in the field to use a standard Motorola handset, equipped with a downloadable application ,to enter health data. Once entered, the data is transfered via a packet based mobile connection (GPRS) into a central database. If GPRS is not available, the software can use an SMS data channel to transmit the information. The data is then mapped and analysed by the system, and is immediately available to health authorities at multiple levels, via the web