UN launches trial Mobile Health campaign in Uganda

The UN launched a ten-day initiative on July 1, 2009 intended to reach out to 10,000 people in Uganda through mobile phones to demonstrate the reach and potential use of mobile phones in health information and promotion.

Mobile health, or mHealth, takes advantage of the broad adoption of mobile telephones to reach the public with health messages for promotion and prevention. The objective of this short campaign is to create awareness and interest in mHealth by demonstrating the possibilities to collect information in real time and showing the ease of outreach to citizens with mobile phones.

The campaign will engage Ugandans in a SMS quiz on health prevention and promotion (questions provided by the WHO); phone users will be able to “opt in” the campaign at no cost.  Participating individuals will then receive confirmation of their responses.

The initiative is sponsored by UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) and the Uganda Ministry of Health.  The results of the Texting4Health demonstration will be shared with Ministers of UN Member States at the Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) session of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in Geneva in July 2009.

This program builds on other innovative programs such as mPedigree’s use of mobile phones to authenticate prescription drugs and combat counterfeiting.