health

 Technology-based interventions for prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS took a small but important place on the agenda at the recent 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, reports attendee Kate Jongbloed who runs an insightful blog on development issues.  She reports for MobileActive from Mexico.

In a session entitled, “Reaching Millions: Youth, AIDS and the Digital Age,” a number of private and non-profit organizations presented their internet and mobile phone based approaches to the fight against AIDS.  A full audio and video version of the panel can be found here.

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In South Africa, mobile phones and HIV/AIDS are two pervsasive realities. Some 75% percent of  children and adults in the country have mobile phones, and according to the National HIV Survey, 10.8% of people over two years old are living with HIV. Almost 1,000 AIDS deaths occur every day. Cell-Life, an NGO based in Cape Town, aims to address this growing AIDS epidemic by using mobile phones.

Cell-Life's "Cellphones for HIV" project continues with two new pilot projects.

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The numbers should speak for themselves. In 2006, there were 9.2 million new tuberculosis (TB) cases and 1.7 million TB deaths. Of these cases, 5.3% were a tough strain of TB that is resistant to treatment (known as MDR-TB, or multiple drug resistant tuberculosis). The total cost of TB control programs in high burden countries is estimated to be about $2.3 billion in 2008.

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Roberta Lamptey Nartey, a family health practitioner in Ghana, used to rely on the walkie talkies of the security guards to communicate between hospitals where she worked. Once she wanted a woman who had had a severe asthma attack transferred from the Korle Bu Polyclinic to the surgery unit of another hospital. Nartey left a message with the night nurses to transfer her patient and wrote a note in the patient's chart, but to her chagrin, the asthmatic patient never appeared in the surgery unit. "I told the security man at the Surgical Unit to send a message to the security man at the polyclinic using his walkie talkie," Nartey wrote.

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A first of its kind program for LGBTs in Las Vegas will begin this month. SMS and website support will be provided to individuals who opt in to the program. There is a 70% smoking prevalence among gays and lesbians in Las Vegas and So Crush SMS will attempt to lower that rate by providing indivuals with quitting tips and links to resources via text message on a weekly basis. "We're very excited about this program. One element that separates our program from others is that we will be individually responding to each incoming message. Canned responses will only be used to identify the group new opt ins are place in. Once in a group, the message correspondence becomes individualized." Jonathan Holly, Program Developer

Educational Message Services and Southern Nevada Health District will be launching a new SMS program to help LGBTs in Las Vegas connect to smoking cessation programs. A first of its kind software interface will enable program administrators to publish packages of information into an SMS platform. LGBTs will be encouraged to text the program to vote for favorite male models, clubs, DJs etc, then once opted into the network, they will receive a series of logic questions and answers to determine the kind of messages they receive at weekly intervals for the duration of the program, i.e. smokers, friend of smoker, or alerts about smoke-free events in Las Vegas. The project is being funded by a grant from American Legacy, and the data collected by the SMS messaging will be researched by Dr.

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