Cellphones may be a key weapon in the war against HIV and AIDS in Africa, the head of the UNAIDS agency said.
The relatively new technology has a role to play in a continent plagued by inadequate health centers and dilapidated infrastructure, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe said.
“You can talk about different policies, about capacity building, but you can’t beat this kind of epidemic with [a] facility-based approach only,” he said.
A major mobile telephone operator in Nigeria already runs a toll-free call scheme that links callers to counselors on HIV-AIDS concerns.
“It’s a fascinating initiative,” Sidibe said. “Its advantage is that you don’t have to move from your place to a center where ... you may be stigmatized.”
“You have free communication and quality advice, which can help you take a decision,” he said.
With basic intensive training and armed with cellphones, local community or village workers could be a part of the health service delivery system, he said.
Despite the resources poured in years into Sub-Saharan Africa to combat HIV-AIDS, the region remains the world’s most heavily affected, accounting for 67 percent of HIV infections, UNAIDS’ figures showed.
“You need first to look at a community-based approach, tap on non-conventional facilities,” Sidibe said during a recent trip to Nigeria.
It was time that Africa, saddled with a myriad of economic, political and social woes, got back to basics, he said.
“I don’t think in any of our African countries we will be able to wait to have professionals, or to have enough of those people,” Sidibe said. “It is time to reinforce our capacity to use the modern technology differently.”
Africa, a continent with one of the highest numbers with access to cellphones, should take advantage of the digital revolution to reach out widely, he said.
“It’s something we need to start replicating in Africa, remember we have more mobile phones in Africa than in north America,” he said.
Nigeria has more than 70 million cellphone line subscribers: about one line for every two people.
A pilot project using cellphones is underway in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna State and southwestern Ondo State.
Village workers — who have barely been through secondary school — have been trained to identify symptoms of minor ailments.
They tour villages examining patients and use their cellphones to call up trained medical workers at a major referral center to get diagnosis and prescriptions dictated over the phone.
“Community health workers go out with a mobile phone connected to a central referral hospital, can take temperatures ... and doctors at the referral units advise on drugs to administer,” Sidibe said. “Using all these types of approaches can help us improve information systems and expand delivery by reaching the poor in the community.”
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
Nauru said it would hold a referendum to change its official name, described as a colonial relic from a time when “foreign tongues” mangled the native language. Nauru would change its name to Naoero to “more faithfully honor our nation’s heritage, our language and our identity,” Nauruan President David Adeang said in a statement on Tuesday. The Pacific island nation’s native language is Dorerin Naoero, which is spoken by the vast majority of its approximately 10,000 inhabitants. “Nauru emerged because Naoero could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues, and was changed not by our choice, but for convenience,” the government said in
RSS