Weekly News Roundup

News

Changamka Microhealth launched a new mobile phone based health product this week that allows informal sector workers in Nairobi access to discounted health services. Dubbed M-Kadi, users benefit from a 50% discount at 34 clinics through payments made via M-Pesa. Read the full story from Business Daily Africa here.

In Uganda, Marie Stopes International works with the Straight Talk Foundation, an organization which raises awareness of sexual and reproductive health by offering young people advice on a weekly radio show. Watch the short film about their amazing work here.

Operation Asha was featured on the Rockefeller Foundation Blog as part of a series which explored the role of using an innovative network model to source new solutions to pressing problems. Dr. Shelly Batra shared how her organization’s model of working with governments and leveraging technology is fighting TB on a community level. Read more here.

Resources

A new article by the Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine identifies four significant operational challenges facing ‪‎mHealth programs in ‪Cambodia. One challenge, described as perhaps the greatest of the four, is the constant switching of SIM cards, and thus phone numbers, amongst users. This issue has very interesting implications for program design, not just in Cambodia but also throughout Africa and other regions with similar telecommunication markets. Learn more and find out the other three challenges here.

The Sunderbans Health Watch (SHW) report, How Healthy are the Children of the Indian Sunderban, has turned heads around the world with findings showing that more than one-third of the children are chronically malnourished and face an “extra burden of morbidity”. Compiled by researchers of India Institute of Health Management and Research (IIHMR) under the Future Health Systems (FHS) research programme, the survey also offers possible solutions, and priority areas of focus for new initiatives. Read the full report here.

UNICEF, WHO, Johns Hopkins University and Frog Design published a mHealth framework in the Journal of Global Health: Science and Practice which provides a new framework that lays out 12 common mHealth applications used by health systems to strengthening innovations across the continuum of care. Download and explore the report here.

The Shops project has released a four-page overview of initiatives they have implemented to strengthen the private health sector in Malawi through improving the financial sustainability of private health businesses and faith-based nongovernmental organizations, mapping private providers and identifying gaps in health coverage, assessing the water treatment product market, and combating childhood diarrhea. Read more from their resource center here.