EXPERTS have said a rapid short message sent from a mobile phone to a central server and connected to transport providers and health facility managers is effective in increasing the access of pregnant women to skilled emergency obstetric services in rural Nigeria.
In a new study, the researchers said difficulty in transportation to access skilled providers has been cited repeatedly as a major barrier to utilisation of emergency obstetric care in Nigeria, adding that a mobile phone application can be used to connect pregnant women with emergency transport and obstetric care in rural areas of the country.
It was in the March edition of the BMC Pregnancy Childbirth and it was titled ‘Texting for life: a mobile phone application to connect pregnant women with emergency transport and obstetric care in rural Nigeria.’
The researchers had implemented the digital health innovation named Text4Life in 20 communities in two predominantly rural local government areas of Edo State, in southern Nigeria, as part of a larger implementation project aimed at improving the access of rural women to skilled pregnancy care.
The communities had no secondary or tertiary health care facilities in the immediate proximity, although transfers can be made to secondary or tertiary facilities in other locations which are between 20km and 173km.
The Text4Life allowed women to send a brief message from their mobile phone to a server linked to primary health care (PHC) facilities and to access pre-registered transport owners.
Pregnant women were registered and taught to text short messages to a server from their mobile phones or those of a friend or relative when and if they experience complications.
The study found that over the 18-month period, 56 women out of 1,620 registered women (3.5 percent) texted the server, requesting emergency transportation.
In addition, of this number, 51 were successfully transported to the PHC facilities, 46 successfully treated at the PHC and five were referred to higher-level care facilities. No maternal deaths occurred during the period, while four perinatal deaths were recorded.
The common complications reported included bleeding, preterm labour, severe lower abdominal pain and severe back pain, among others.
They declared: “The results indicate that the intervention is feasible, especially when applied with the active participation of community members and transport services. It can be achieved in the prevention of maternal and perinatal deaths when a careful use of mobile phones is planned and implemented.”
Difficulty with transportation has featured repeatedly as one of the major challenges that limit women’s use of skilled pregnancy care, especially in rural settings. While several interventions and innovations to address the bottlenecks have been proposed, this is one of a few such interventions that rely on the use of mobile phones.
