Tanzania’s Healthy Baby Text Messaging Service Hits One Year | Reports Over 21 Million Messages Sent

Mobile phone users receive SMS from their friends and family and even work mates everyday. Though this SMS text messages are important, one organization in Tanzania has decided to use the simple format to reach pregnant mothers and their husbands with messages of life.

The The Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby Text Messaging Service, an initiative of mHealth Tanzania Public Private Partnership Tanzania and Text to Change, is helping give advice to mothers and fathers to be in a country with over 22 million mobile phone subscribers. With over 21 million messages sent, the service is looking forward to a greater 2014, and more partnerships to help reach more Tanzanians.

Khalifan Ramadan, is one of the 300,000 Tanzanian registrants who signed up for the Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby Text Messaging Service which has been promoted across the nation and offers a large range of maternal health and early childcare topics via SMS directly to his phone.

Ramadan says he receives about 3 or 4 messages to his phone every week with a lot of maternal health advice.

“This is our first pregnancy. It is easy to do something wrong, but these messages inform us how to do it right. Also, I don’t need to pay for the service,” he said.

The simple service has now send over 21 million messages to pregnant women, mothers with newborn babies (up to 16 weeks) and supporters of women, like this father to be.

Those who are just in need of general healthy pregnancy information can also sign up. The objective of the service is to offer men and women – located in every corner of the country and from any income level – healthy pregnancy advice and early childhood care information. This information includes time sensitive reminders for such events as antenatal clinic visits and taking of malaria prevention medication. This information is carefully timed and relevant to the specific registrant, like pregnant women or their supporters. The carefully targeted large range of healthy pregnancy topics, from ANC visit reminders to birth planning and ‘fun’ informative information for all these types of audiences, makes this a unique service. However, there are other important aspects that make this service so special.

According to Muttah Saulo, mHealth Tanzania Public Private Partnership project manager of the Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby – Text Messaging Service,“The service is truly an example of the perfect implementation of expertise sharing and pooling of resources. It is important to understand that the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoHSW) Reproductive Child Health Services (RCHS) section is the overall leader of the service. Together with many technical partners in the maternal health and early childcare fields the RCHS team provided key input to the development of the messaging service and content and will continue to do so when the service expands with information reaching beyond the age of 16 weeks of a baby.”

The Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby Text Messaging Service was launched in November 2012 with the Wazazi Nipendeni (Parents Love Me) Safe Motherhood multi-media campaign and funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and US Presidents Malaria Initiative, through the United States Agency for International Development.

Also using radio, TV, billboards and posters to promote the free short-code (15001) and the registration keyword ‘mtoto‘(‘baby‘), the campaign directs the public to register and receive the information for free.

Now with over 300,000 subscribers on the platform, the Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby Text Messaging Service is free to use with subsidies paid by the US Government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). With a two-year partnership with Airtel Tanzania, the SMS service reaches a large number of registrants who access it for free.