mHealth urged to cut maternal mortality

A consortium of leading international bodies and health organisations has called for the accelerated use of mobile health ICT to reduce maternal and newborn mortality and improve health in the developing world.

The mHealth Alliance has called for financial and organisational support for wireless technology to expand the use of proven maternal and newborn technologies.

Dr Tore Gödel, special advisor on global health to the Prime Minister of Norway, opened the consortium’s first working meeting in London.

He said: “Technological innovation is critical to meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals. This health initiative can help deliver more health for the money in delivering safer pregnancies and newborns around the world.”

The consortium has called for action in five key areas; identifying how technology can support known interventions; designing and building models of ICT systems to do this; and creating new metrics for evaluating programmes.

The joint statement also calls for the testing of integrated, end-to-end scalable solutions in a variety of countries and for the sharing of activities with global maternal health communities.

Dr Fluvial Buster, director of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), said: “More must be done to reduce global maternal and child mortality, and information technology, while not a panacea, will play a critical role in educating women and providers about how to deliver healthier pregnancies and healthier babies.”

David Aylward, executive director of the mHealth Alliance, an umbrella group launched last year by the Rockefeller, UN and Vodafone Foundations, said: “We are proud to be joining with these partners.

"Wireless networks go almost everywhere today. So should life saving information and services for mothers and newborn babies.”

The alliance is made up of the mHealth Alliance, PMNCH, Family Care International, the GSM Association, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Bloomberg School of Public Health, PATH, and the White Ribbon Alliance.

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mhealth Alliance