Crafting your weekend plans? Well, don’t forget to add “Celebrate World Malaria Day” to your calendar this Sunday, April 25.
If you’re not sure how to join in, then don’t miss this website. Roll Back Malaria—a global partnership founded in 1998 to help tackle malaria across the globe—has a great website filled with malaria posters; videos of world leaders, soccer stars and celebrities speaking out in the fight against the disease; fact sheets and reports; a look at the Global Malaria Action Plan; a round-up of partner statements and press releases in honor of World Malaria Day 2010; and a long list of events taking place in the US and across the globe.
You can check out the site here. And with so much going on, you might just want to pencil in a quick nap this weekend, too.
They are at IBM, anyway. A while back we blogged about a new initiative spearheaded by Roll Back Malaria called SMS for Life.
Now comes a profile from Fast Company about the interns at IBM who came up with the idea. You can check out the full article here.
A new initiative called SMS for Life, born from the minds of a group of IBM’s Extreme Blue interns and pharmaceutical company Novartis, uses cell phones, texting and an e-mapping Web site to track and manage the supply malaria-fighting drugs in Africa. The disease, carried by mosquitoes, kills nearly one million Africans each year–mostly pregnant women and small children. Many people die because the medicine distribution system is poorly managed, causing many villages to simply lack the necessary medication due to poor planning and limited availability.
The five-month pilot program is currently being tested in three diverse districts in in Tanzania, containing more than 130 villages and a total population of more than a million residents. Each week, health-care workers receive automated text messages reminding them to check their stock of anti-malarial drugs. The workers check their supplies and text back their current levels, allowing deliveries to be made where they are most needed, before supplies run out.
Malaria No More’s blog “Buzzwords” picked up this story about a really innovative new way to provide malaria patients with easy access to life-saving anti-malarial medication– through cell phones and text messaging, of course.
Called “SMS for Life”, this pilot project is headed by Roll Back Malaria in collaboration with Vodafone and IBM and seeks to “harness everyday technology to eliminate stock-outs and improve access to essential medicines in sub-Saharan Africa.” By using a combination of mobile phones, SMS messages and electronic mapping technology, “SMS for Life” can enable a more efficient system for tracking and managing medical supplies.
Earlier this week we blogged about other breakthroughs in using cell phones to help fight poverty and disease, something that’s becoming more and more of a trend. Check out “SMS for Life”s website here, and check back on the ONE Blog for further developments on this front.
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