Founder/CEO Maternal and Child Aid Cameroon
E-mail: elngala@yahoo.co.uk
Tel: 237 99 13 84 44
Mother and Child Aid Cameroon
(MACAC) is a not-for profit organization dedicated to the protection, promotion
and support of Maternal and Child health in rural communities of Cameroon
through research, advocacy, outreach programs and community-driven intervention
programs as part of her efforts in reducing maternal and infant mortality.
Mother and Child Aid Cameroon is a group of young health and media professionals
comprising medical doctors, nurses, public health consultants, allied health
professionals, writers, journalists and mass communication IT specialists.
Our mission is to coordinate
efforts by organizations, agencies, institutions, and individuals towards the
development of strategic plans, policies, and goals for maternal and child
health and advocates that proper community health practices and attitudes are
promoted in Cameroon and given priority as indispensable steps to achieving
Millennium Development Goals four (4) and five (05). This is achieved through the following
activities: breaking cultural beliefs and myths and encouraging women to use
reproductive health services, capacity building of traditional birth attendants
in proper and aseptic delivery techniques as well as prevention of post partum
hemorrhage, increase HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention of mother to child
transmission of HIV through use of mobile technology, training community health workers and lay
health promoters who make a personal commitment to improving the health of
babies and infants through encouragement of attitudes and practices that
promote exclusive breastfeeding, behavior change communication, improve
community domestic hygiene and sanitation for optimal health.
Definitions: eHealth
is the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in support of
health systems. mHealth is the mobile component, particularly the use of mobile
phones in support of health systems.
It is worth noting
that in using a cell phone to make a phone call we can also be thinking about
innovations. There is no study addressing the improved health outcome of
calling a midwife at the initiation of labor. Institutionalizing in a country,
for example, giving pregnant women access to a cell phone, requires effort to
scale up and sustain.
eHealth applications can be grouped in many
different ways. Here is one grouping:
- Patient information
- Health provider support
- Data collection
- Health information systems
Added to the eHealth
applications above (i.e., patient information, health provider support, data
collection, health information systems, telemedicine, and mobile payments), the
Intermediate result is high impact eHealth solutions.
The goal is to
improve access to, and the affordability, quality and sustainability of the key
health interventions needed to achieve MACAC’s core health priorities. The key
health interventions are both program specific, including ANC, PMTCT, etc., in
addition to health systems, such as health information. Core health priorities include family
planning/reproductive health, health systems strengthening, saving mothers,
fostering an AIDS-free generation, fighting infectious diseases and ending
preventable child deaths.
MACAC Guiding principles
include:
1) Integration
2) Gender equity
3) Innovation to:
a) Increase the scale of
evidence-based mHealth solutions and
b) Identify tests and
introduce promising mHealth solutions; and
4) Partnerships to
ensure scale and sustainability.
Strategy: General categories examined:
- Expanding use of mHealth
- Technical expertise and capacity development
- Research and learning
- Equipment and infrastructure
- Tools
Frontline health
workers, including community health workers, nurses and midwives, are the first
and often only link to health care for hundreds of thousands of people living
in the rural communities of Cameroon; they are critical in settings where
overall primary health care systems are weak or inaccessible. Recruiting,
retraining, retaining and supporting these workers is essential for
accelerating progress towards Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5.
Although frontline health workers are the backbone of health systems in these
resource‐constrained environments, they face numerous challenges:
- Inadequate refresher training
- Weak performance incentives
- Difficulty reaching remote populations
- A lack of supportive supervision
- Inadequate supply of health products, and
- Insufficient real time access to patient data and reference information
By applying
public health standards and practices to mHealth, we promote approaches that
are appropriate, evidence-based, scalable and interoperable in resource-poor
settings. Low-end mobile phones have demonstrated popularity, cultural
appropriateness, scalability, commercial sustainability, and infrastructural
sustainability. Mobile phones largely meet these burdens of proof for
technology in resource-poor environments.
Project goals:
The study will research whether an m-Health
intervention would enable rural community health workers to improve the quality
and reach of their maternal and child health care services. The goal of the
study is to build a tool to rigorously test the impact of the use of mobile
technology on health outcomes of rural mothers and children through a
randomized evaluation.
Brief description of the project:
The project intends to test how mobile
technology could aid health workers with maternal and child health, focusing on
three main areas of care:
1. Improving antenatal care and delivery services
2.
Improving vaccination coverage
3.
Facilitating emergency referrals
Target
audience:
The
target audience is researchers, policy makers, and anyone designing mobile
health interventions.
Detailed
Information
Length
of Project (in months): 12
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