SMS for Life

 
Printer-friendly versionSend by emailPDF version
Region: 
Africa & Middle East
Country: 
Tanzania
Partners: 
Roll Back Malaria;
Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare;
Novartis;
Vodacom;
Medicines for Malaria Venture;
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation;
Activities: 

This initiative uses a combination of mobile phones, SMS messages and electronic mapping technology to generate information on stock availability of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) and quinine injectables and delivers it on a weekly basis to all health facilities. This visibility is meant to avoid stock-outs and ultimately to reduce the number of deaths from malaria. The pilot project in three districts launched in 2009 resulted in a significant increase in the number of health facilities that had at least one ACT dosage form in stock and in the number of people that had access to all malaria treatments at the close of the pilot. Based on the successful pilot, the public-private initiative behind SMS for Life announced the nation-wide roll-out across 5,000 health facilities in April 2011.

Further reading: 

Guardian 2011, Text for Life, International Development Journalism Competition, 29 June 2011

Roll Back Malaria 2010, SMS for Life Tanzania Pilot Project Report

Roll Back Malaria 2010, 'SMS for Life' Pilot Increases Availability of Malaria Treatments Threefold at Participating Health Facilities, Press release, 21 April 2010

Roll Back Malaria 2009, SMS for Life: An RBM Initiative

PRNewswire 2009, Saving Lives with SMS for Life: IBM, Novartis and Vodafone Join Forces to Help Halt Malaria in Africa, Press release, 14 Dec. 2009

Mobile Marketing Magazine 2009, SMS for Life Saves Lives in Tanzania
 

[added March 2010, updated July 2011]

Share this

Comments

0 comments posted

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

Type the characters you see in this picture. (verify using audio)
Type the characters you see in the picture above; if you can't read them, submit the form and a new image will be generated. Not case sensitive.

Disclaimer

The project information listed on this site does neither claim completeness, nor does the mentioning of a project present a statement regarding its status, credibility or success. While we strive to keep the content as up-to-date as possible, project information may have changed between updating cycles. Please contact us if we have missed information or corrections are required. KIT does not take responsibility or liability for projects listed on these pages, nor content of external sites that are included as links.