On World Aids Day, 1st December 2011, the first Connect4Change program in Uganda officially kicked off for Text to Change and Health Child.

The C4C program with Health Child targets pregnant women and the community in the Eastern region of Uganda, Jinja. There are still high rates of child mortality at 147 per 1000 live births. The program uses a community based approach to reduce maternal and infant mortality in Uganda, accelerating uptake of post partum care and promotion child health including early infant HIV diagnosis. The target is to have at least 450 pregnant and postnatal period mothers who have joined the program for a period of 6 months.

 On World Aids Day health messages were sent via SMS to 1250 people asking them to opt in to receive a host of health related messages over the following six months. The first 20 people who joined were rewarded with airtime as an incentive. Women who chose to participate received quiz questions regarding the transmission of HIV from mother to child.

Health Child Project Coordinator, Ms Sarah Nalule helping the Guest of Honour on World Aids Day opt in to the quiz

The women will be targeted to improve awareness on maternal health, encouraging them to attend at least four antenatal care visits at their local health clinics and to take up post-natal care services, which include family planning, full immunization, as well as Prevention to Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) and early infant HIV diagnosis and services.

Text to Change has a flexible platform which can adapt to participants’ communication needs. For example, messages can be sent in English, Luganda or any other preferred local language. To overcome any illiteracy issues, the program is also going to make use of voice SMS messages, so that recipients receive a prerecorded message, instead of having to rely solely on a text SMS.

This project follows a 2 successful 4-6 month pilots in 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 on interactive text messaging for health. Text to Change has built a strong reputation for its ability to promote ICT for health care in Africa and has numerous projects around the continent.

Connect4Change (C4C) is a consortium of AKVO, Cordaid, Edukans, ICCO and IICD. C4C addresses the issues of poverty and exclusion in Africa and Latin America, in the areas of health, economic development and education – seeking solutions based on the use of the internet and mobile phones.

Health Child works in close partnership with the District Health Office, lower level health centers, private partners and community persons to implement a wide range of activities, focusing on Early Childhood development which includes child survival, early childhood education, child protection and child nutrition.

Text to Change (TTC) is an award winning, non-profit organization, that has led the way in using mobile telephony to promote awareness of humanitarian and health-related issues; it operates in collaboration with NGOs, mobile network operators and other partners in the public and private sector - in countries across the developing world. TTC is running projects in 15 countries.