Interesting Snippets

In the past two months, Grameen has registered 500 expectant parents in the Kassena-Nankana area of Ghana, near the border with Burkina Faso, to receive free, regular phone calls and text messages guiding them through pregnancy. At week seven in the pregnancy, a parent receives a text reminder to take a malaria vaccination. At week 37, the parent is told that contrary to myth, eating fruits such as mango and proteins such as eggs is nutritious and won’t harm the fetus.

Activeone is designed to be worn around the neck or on a belt. Sensors trigger an alert if the customer appears to have fallen. A call center staff member can then speak to the customer through the device’s speaker to ascertain if there is an emergency.

In Japan, you can now buy your granny a mobile phone called a ‘raku raku’ – which means ‘easy easy’ – designed specifically for the elderly. It has a built-in pedometer to track how many steps she is taking each day. And you can set that so that it sends a daily e-mail to your inbox, letting you know your granny is still up and about and getting the right amount of exercise. There might be an advertisement attached. Is that media? Or health-care provision? Or is it both?

Jacques-André Ndione, a researcher at the Centre de Suivi Ecologique, a government public-health agency in Dakar, Senegal, is also impressed by the power of satellite monitoring. He cites one study which showed that in west Africa malaria tends to spread faster in suburban neighbourhoods than in cities and slums. The reason, revealed by satellite, is that the suburbs have more backyard ponds and puddles. Indeed, satellites can not only count such small bodies of water, they can measure their longevity, salinity and mud content—and thus how mosquito-friendly they are