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Uganda: Using mobile phones to fight HIV/AIDS
PlusNews
September 04, 2008
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=80176
Uganda's rising HIV prevalence
is forcing policy makers to look for inventive ways of educating
people about the virus. Their latest tool is mobile phone technology,
whose rapid growth has provided an avenue that could potentially
reach millions with messages. Text to Change (TTC) , an NGO that
uses a bulk short message service (SMS) platform for HIV/AIDS education,
recently partnered with the AIDS Information Centre in Uganda (AIC)
and Celtel, a local mobile phone network, to pilot a project in
western Uganda aimed at communicating knowledge about the disease
and encouraging subscribers to volunteer for HIV testing.
The Uganda Communications
Commission expects the number of mobile phone users to hit the six
million mark by the end of 2008. In urban areas, as many as 50 percent
of people have mobile phones, compared to 10 percent in rural areas,
according to the 2006 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (DHS).
Knowledge levels are often very low; the DHS found that while almost
everyone had heard of HIV/AIDS, only about 30 percent of women and
40 percent of men had comprehensive knowledge. TTC launched the
pilot programme on Valentine's Day and ran it for the next six to
eight weeks with the slogan, "Don't guess the answers, learn
the truth about AIDS".
The organisation chose
a list of 15,000 Celtel subscribers in Mbarara district in southwestern
Uganda and sent them an introductory SMS asking if they would like
to participate in a free interactive quiz about HIV, with the incentive
of handsets and airtime as rewards for correct answers. A question
was sent each week; if the recipient answered correctly, a confirmation
SMS was sent, and if he or she answered incorrectly, a rectifying
message was sent. Questions included: "What is the difference
between HIV and AIDS?", "How is HIV transmitted?",
"Have you ever tested for HIV?" About 2,500 of the 15,000
subscribers contacted responded to each question. At the end of
the trial period of questions and answers, participants were encouraged
to go for HIV testing.
According to Robert Natlaka,
AIC's representative, requests at their central Mbarara facility
rose by 100 percent over the pilot's six-week duration. "About
255 [participants] turned up to AIC in Mbarara for testing; some
others also went to AIC partners [around] the district." Only
15 percent of rural women and 11 percent of rural men know their
HIV status. After reaching a low of six percent in 2003, Uganda's
HIV prevalence has had a slight upturn and now stands at 6.7 percent.
Bas Hoefman, the public
relations officer at TTC, felt that more people would respond if
the questions were written in local languages, and there was better
sensitisation and awareness of the campaign. TTC plans to expand
the programme to other districts in the next year.
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