On Friday, 9 December 2016, the Ministry of Health officially launched a telephone-based system that has revolutionised healthcare in rural areas of Burkina Faso. Called mHealth, the system designed by TICANALYSE enables integrated management of childhood illnesses. The system was implemented with support from UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The mortality rate for children under 5 is 80 per 1,000 in Burkina Faso. And according to Dr Simon Sanou, 51 out of every 100 inhabitants use mobile phones in Burkina Faso.
Based on this observation, the Ministry of Health, in its fight against infant and child mortality, has decided to integrate new technologies into improving health conditions in community areas.
Combining technology and health is the challenge taken up by TICANALYSE, which designed the mHealth Burkina system, a solution that addresses this issue. An innovative device, mHealth Burkina is a new approach for rural communities.
As a result, demonstration sessions on the use of mobile phones for data collection and transmission have been set up in health and social promotion centres (CSPS).
MHealth has thus made it possible, on the one hand, to boost the productivity of Community-Based Health Workers, leading to a significant drop in infant mortality rates. On the other hand, it has facilitated the transmission of qualitative data on case management and made it easier to restock medicines. This has been achieved by equipping CHWs with mobile phones featuring the application.
To date, six health districts are using mHealth Burkina, and a total of 182 ICPs and 1,638 ASBCs using mHealth Burkina have been added to these districts according to data received from the Directorate of IT and Telehealth Services (DSITS). These include the health districts of Yako with 53 ICPs and 500 ASBs; Courcy with 34 ICPs and 218 ASBCs; Seguenega with 23 ICPs and 243 ASBCs; Ouayigouya with 33 IPCs and 243 ASBCs; Thiou with 19 ICPs and 201 ASBCs; and finally Titao with 20 ICPs and 229 ASBCs.
TICANALYSE is proud to have contributed to setting up this technological infrastructure.
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