GHDonline Member Spotlight – Evelyn Castle
eHealth Nigeria’s director, Evelyn Castle, will participate in GHDonline Member Spotlight next week (April 16th – 20th). Her bio and short introduction was posted online today by Prof. Terry Hannan. You can read the introduction post here and sign up to GHDonline to participate in the Member Spotlight next week.
Solar System Installation At Hotoro PHC
On Monday 26th of March 2012, eHealth Nigeria installed a solar system at Hotoro Primary Health Care Center. A large suitcase was installed in the labour and delivery room. Both LED lights were mounted in a fixed position on the ceiling. A satellite box (which allows for an extension of the solar system) was fixed in the post-partum room. The healthcare workers were very happy to always have lights now to do their work more effectively. Healthcare workers were trained on how to use and maintain the suitcase. They were eager to learn and asked so many questions during the training.
The deputy co-ordinator for maternal and child healthcare from the Kano Ministry of Health attended the installation. She said that this is a laudable and beautiful project. She plans give a report on it to the Kano State Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health.
More pictures of the installation were added to the Pisaca website ablums. click here.
Solar Installation At Indabo PHC
On the 21st-03-2012, a solar installation was carried out at Indabo PHC, Wudil LGA of Kano State. A large solar suitcase was mounted in the labour and delivery room. Both LED lights were mounted in a fixed position in the second and third stage room. Training was conducted while the installation was taking place. Healthcare workers were busy today because its one of their ANC days. Training was put on hold for a while so that they could all participate in the training.
The healthcare workers were very happy to have lights now to conduct deliveries and do their work more effectively at night, because the whole LGA has had no NEPA/ grid supply for over a year and the generator that supplies light to the PHC is faulty.
Check out more pictures of the installation here
Post in ict4chw on mCBS project
Yesterday, Andrew Karlyn wrote a post entitled “Can traditional birth attendants (TBAs) use mobile technology to report vital maternal and newborn events at the community level in northern Nigeria? An evaluation of RapidSMS in Zaria, Nigeria” for the ict4chw google group. Check it out and let us know if you have any questions or comments.
Wired Magazine features eHN
On February 3rd, Wired Magazine posted an article about eHealth Nigeria entitled “Open Source Tackles Healthcare In Places Microsoft Can’t“. The article discusses how we are using open-source technology to create systems that are better suited for the Nigerian environment. The article focuses on the work that we do with OpenMRS, an open-source electronic medical record system, which we currently have implemented in over 10 sites in Nigeria.
Poster at the mHealth Summitt
The 3rd Annual mHealth Summit was held in Washington DC last week (Dec 5-7, 2011). It is the largest event of its kind, and brings together leaders in government, the private sector, industry, academia, providers and not-for-profit organizations from across the mHealth ecosystem to advance collaboration in the use of wireless technology to improve health outcomes in the United States and abroad.
eHealth Nigeria was selected to present a poster on a project that we did in conjunction with the Population Council and the Population and Reproductive Health Initiative (based out of the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital).
The poster was entitled “The use of RapidSMS to facilitate community-based surveillance for maternal and newborn health in rural communities in Northern Nigeria”.
Abstract:
In rural communities of Northern Nigeria maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) is hindered due to the lack of timely and accurate health reports, a lack of coordination amongst public health stakeholders, and lack of urgent and follow-up care. The mobile Community Based Surveillance (mCBS) project introduced a means of capturing maternal newborn child health (MNCH) data in Northern Nigeria through the use of coded SMS messages that transmitted the observations of traditional birth attendants (TBAs), a community nurse midwife (CNMW), and skilled community health workers (CHW) to a centralized information system. Four TBAs received a week-long training on cell phone literacy and vital event reporting via SMS. They also received “refresher” trainings on how to recognize 10 different MNCH vital events which included eclampsia, post-partum hemorrhage, miscarriage, and others. For three months TBAs reported vital events via SMS as well as a low-literate manual-count method for comparison. The CNMW then forwarded weekly summaries of vital events via SMS. For urgent events, the CHWs were immediately alerted to respond at the community level, and sent an SMS detailing the outcome. Preliminary analysis of process and outcome data indicated that non-skilled, illiterate TBAs could be trained to effectively send SMS messages to report MNCH vital events. Accuracy and timeliness of rural public health reporting and response improved. As the program is expanded, it is expected that the use of the SMS reports will continue to reduce the time it takes to receive urgent care, improve follow-ups on deliveries, and thus improve MNCH outcomes. The project demonstrates that non- and semi-skilled health workers can be incorporated into in a real-time, community-based, data collection scheme. Furthermore, the project offers a pathway to engage TBAs as productive members of health reporting and referral systems in a severely resource deprived setting.
Poster:
AMD Case Study of eHealth Nigeria
Recently, AMD released a case study about eHealth Nigeria entitled “AMD helps eHealth Nigeria build a system designed to improve health care”.
As we began to build our data center in Nigeria, we looked for equipment that was durable, low-power, powerful, and would meet all of our needs. After working with ICC, we decided on using AMD equipment.
Read the whole case study here:
National Conference on Health Information Technology
The National Conference on Health Information Technology will take place in Abuja from Nov. 2nd – 4th. eHealth Nigeria’s Adam Thompson will be giving a speech entitled “The problem of Health IT infrastructure in Nigeria and possible solutions”. Take a look at the Program Details to see what other presenters will be at the conference.
eHealth Nigeria is Hiring! Project Manager for PMTCT Initiative in Kano State.
eHealth Nigeria, with support from Family Health International and the Population Council, is leading an mHealth Initiative to improve the coverage of PMTCT services in Kano State, Nigeria.
For the position of “Community Mobilization Program Officer”, we are looking for a skilled project manager with experience in health program management. Speaking Hausa is a requirement, experience in PMTCT is very helpful, Public Health experience is greatly desired, candidate will need to possess excellent written and oral communication skills, also familiarity with computers is necessary.
Salary range will be =N= 130,000 to =N= 190,000 monthly depending on experience.
Please contact info@ehealthnigeria.org with you inquiries.
A detailed job description is available here: Job Description: Community Mobilization Program Officer