Guinea: Texting – A good idea as a reminder

For several months, health care providers working in 15 Guinean health centres receive text messages on their cell phones. Every weeks, key messages sent by the Tdh delegation remind them good practices to care children and newborns babies suffering from malnutrition.

At the end of a convincing test phase, the experiment was enlarged to include all the health workers from 15 health centres for a three month period. The messages focussed on tools for handling, looking after children with malnutrition, communication with the people responsible for the children, and the essential things to be done for good nutrition.

Thanks to this, the supervisory team on the spot soon confirmed an improvement in dealing with the people admitted to the health centres. The system enables improved treatment of cases being re-admitted after having given up on their treatment, or in cases of relapse. Patient registration also became more meticulous, so fatalities and cases of treatment abandonment are now better identified. The procedures, such as the appetite test, are kept to, and handling cases of non-response to treatment is better. In general, the entire method of working has benefited from the added value of the texting.

Thanks to this initiative, the health workers have got into the habit of sending messages to ask for details on certain subjects, or on the way to handle special cases such as underweight newborn babies.