Airtel has partnered with global mobile trade association the GSMA, to support its cross-ecosystem mHealth partnership programme aimed at providing a range of services to women and children, with a particular focus on nutrition, across 11 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Airtel Africa CEO Christian de Faria said: “This partnership takes full advantage of mobile technology to provide healthcare information and services in Sub-Saharan Africa to support the scale-up of mHealth in nutrition, maternal and child health. The partnership will leverage existing and new Airtel SIMs to allow access to health content, health registration and data collection.”
Airtel, GSMA and other partners aim to provide health content, do patient registration, data collection and critical diagnostics to help increase the access to health care for vulnerable women and children across Africa, while providing the delivery mechanism for mHealth services.
The other partners include Gemalto, Hello Doctor, Lifesaver, Mobenzi, Mobilium, Omega Diagnostics and Samsung. They also aim at reducing barriers to handset ownership and connectivity for consumers and health workers.
“The GSMA mHealth programme is committed to connecting the mobile and health industries to develop commercially sustainable mHealth services that meet public health needs,” said Tom Phillips, Chief Regulatory Officer, GSMA. “We are working with companies such as Airtel to deliver the objectives of the United Nations Every Women Every Child Global Strategy, as well as the Global Nutrition for Growth Compact, in the areas of nutrition and maternal and child health. We call on mobile ecosystem players, health providers, governments, NGOs, civil society and others to join this initiative to create life-saving mobile health services.”