Reuters AlertNet Full site
Homepage | Newsdesk | NGO Latest | Crisis briefings | Country profiles | MediaWatch | Jobs | Alerting | Login

NEWSDESK

MALAWI: SMS to fight malnutrition
13 Jan 2009 16:37:22 GMT
 Source: IRIN

Background

•  Food and hunger

•  African hunger

•  E. African hunger

•  S. African hunger

•  Children

MORE >>
JOHANNESBURG, 13 January 2009 (IRIN) - For the first time in years, John Phiri*, a health extension worker in Malawi's central Salima district, does not have to fill in a stack of forms during his monthly round of collecting data to monitor nutrition levels in the community.

Now he whips out his mobile phone and texts the data, including the height and weight of the children in the area, while covering his beat. The information is immediately captured by a computer that stores the national nutritional and food-security statistics in Lilongwe, the capital.

In previous years the data might have taken two months to be registered in the country's Integrated Nutritional and Food Security Surveillance System. The quick collection and availability of data can help government and other aid agencies intervene if the statistics show a crisis is unfolding.

Malawi has one of the world's worst under-five mortality rates: up to 120 infants in every 1,000 may die before they turn five, and 46 percent of children younger than five years are stunted - an indicator of the malnutrition level.

The RapidSMS system, as it is called, is on a four-month trial run that began in January 2009 in three districts of Malawi's Central Province. The SMS (short message service) text message and web-based tool was developed by the Innovations and Development team of UNICEF, the UN children's agency, and allows text messages to be captured via the internet.

Besides the obvious advantage of speed and quality of data, the system also creates spreadsheets and graphs, allowing for easy interpretation of the data.

Yet doing away with the old system of completing questionnaires and sending them to the capital using the postal system has its drawbacks.

The new system is expensive. In Malawi it costs about 10 US cents to send a text message, "But we are in talks with the mobile phone service provider to make the service toll-free," said Stanley Chitekwe, UNICEF's nutrition manager.

Christopher Fabian, who co-heads UNICEF's Innovations and Development team, maintains that the service is still cheaper than the manual collection of data. "The first week of the trial run only cost about $40."

Replacing the questionnaire with only the numbers also means anecdotal information on household security, obtained via the questionnaire, is also lost. "We are aware of that – we are trying to develop a system which will help us get a sense of household food security levels and coping strategies, and we hope to get the system running after four months," Chitekwe said.

Even before it kicked off, the Malawi project, designed by UNICEF and Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, in the US, won first prize in the Development 2.0 Challenge, run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), for its innovative design for adapting a commonly accessible technology to monitor the health and nutritional status of children.

Tested in Ethiopia

The Malawian programme was developed after UNICEF's success with the RapidSMS system in monitoring and delivering the protein-rich read-to-use therapeutic food, Plumpy'nut, in drought-hit Ethiopia in October 2008.

"It used to take the agency three to four months to respond [depending on when the information reached the head office] to shortages [of Plumpy'nut] in the 1,800 feeding centres in Ethiopia – now the alerts get through within seconds," said Fabian.

Before implementing the RapidSMS system in Ethiopia, initial field testing was done in northern Uganda by Sean Blaschke, a student at Columbia University who worked as a UNICEF intern during May 2008 in Uganda's Kitgum district. The area is prone to Hepatitis E outbreaks, a disease caused mainly by drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated food.

UNICEF is also considering developing the system to monitor school attendance rates. "It can have any number of uses," said Fabian. "We hope to make the system available, free of cost, to organisations and other implementing partners soon."

* Not his real name

jk/he

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org


AlertNet news is provided by
Email this article       Send comments

Topics

•  Children

•  Food and hunger

MORE >>

Emergencies

•  E. African hunger

•  African hunger

•  S. African hunger

MORE >>

NGO latest

•  Unprecedented response as British public signs up to Save the Children UK's 'Enough is Enough' Gaza ceasefire campaign
Save the Children - International Alliance

•  TV News Footage: Medical care for seriously wounded in Gaza stretched to the limit
ICRC - Switzerland

•  Why should children wait so long?
World Vision - Asia Pacific

•  ACT: Gaza teenager died from fear
ACT - Switzerland

•  Protect civilians in Gaza
ActionAid

MORE >>

Latest news

•  MALAWI: SMS to fight malnutrition

•  CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Alone in the fight against AIDS

•  UNHCR concerned about displaced Congolese and continuing LRA attacks

•  AFRICA: Soil scientists join efforts to boost food security

•  ETHIOPIA-SOMALIA: SOMALIA: Ethiopian troops leave parts of Mogadishu

MORE >>

IRIN news

Background information

Briefings
E. African hunger - [Who works where]
African hunger - [Who works where]
S. African hunger - [Who works where]

Topics
Children Food and hunger
Facts & figures
Uganda Malawi Ethiopia

Related articles

Breaking stories
 MALAWI: SMS to fight malnutrition (1 minute ago)

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Alone in the fight against AIDS (1 minute ago)

AlertNet insight
 Disaster-heavy 2008 raises pressure for climate pact, insurance (1 minute ago)

Aid agency news feed
 Unprecedented response as British public signs up to Save the Children UK's 'Enough is Enough' Gaza ceasefire campaign (1 minute ago)

Blogs
 Gaza: 'Were my friends at school when it was bombed?' (1 minute ago)

Maps
 MAP: GLOBAL: Rabies, countries or areas at risk (2008) (1 minute ago)


Del.icio.us Del.icio.us  |   Digg Digg  |   NewsVine NewsVine  |   Reddit Reddit   
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-01-13T154154Z_01_CRI05_RTRIDSP_2_COSTARICA-QUAKE_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/CRI05.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-01-13T140300Z_01_SAN03_RTRIDSP_2_YEMEN_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/SAN03.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-01-13T135019Z_01_SAN01_RTRIDSP_2_YEMEN_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/SAN01.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-01-13T111234Z_01_OSM03_RTRIDSP_2_TURKEY_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/OSM03.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-01-13T111117Z_01_OSM02_RTRIDSP_2_TURKEY_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/OSM02.htm

A child walks in a field used as temporary refuge for earthquake survivors, early morning in Fraijanes January 13, 2009. The final death toll in Costa Rica from a 6.1 magnitude ...


More pictures | Galleries
Disclaimers |  Copyright |  Privacy |  Contact Us |  Feedback |  About Us |  RSS XML

Last updated:Tue Jan 13 16:37:48 2009