Ondo State use Mobile phones to Improve Maternal and Child Health

By Ayo Bamgboye (AHIN)
Two years after the initiation of  Abiye Safe Motherhood Project and the Mother & Child Hospital initiatives aimed at improving maternal and child health in the state, there has been improvement in the care for pregnant and child health. , Ondo State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Dayo Adeyanju stated that  there has been 30 per cent reduction in maternal mortality since the inception of the project.
The project is based on the use of  mobile telephone technology to facilitate communication between pregnant and nursing mothers and their health carers.  Dr. Dayo Adeyanju said that the project kicked off at the back of study conducted understand the plight of women in the state. The study revealed that the number of women that attend and went back to deliver at the basic health centres were disappointing. Thus, the state government through Abiye safe motherhood project and the mother and child hospital projects decided to track the women by distributing mobile phones to every registered pregnant women in the state as a way of attracting them back to the facilities
“Under the Abiye, we give mobile phones to the women free of charge because that is the only way they can be connected to their health rangers, policy makers and get connected to the commissioner even the Governor when any doctor is misbehaving and the rangers since they have established rapour with them, they can always track them when they are having contraction to come back to the health facilities and that is the essence of the phone”.
The result of the use of the use of mobile phone technology in the project has shown  30 per cent reduction, and then by 2015 we would have reduced by 75 per cent. We have delivered 1,217 babies in one year with one mortality. This is 1 in 100,000 live births. If we extrapolate, that will give 100 per 100,000 live births and for Nigeria as we speak, the average maternal mortality ratio is 545 by 100,000 live births. So we have crashed from 545 to 100 in one year.”