Kemri develops mobile phone tool to help fight mother-to-child HIV transmission

Efforts to stop the spread of HIV from expectant mothers to unborn babies has received a boost thanks to a mobile texting tool that passes HIV information to mothers.

Researchers from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) have designed the Texting to improve Testing (TextIT) tool which sends reminders of pre natal and post natal clinic visits and pregnancy concerns to expectant mothers through mobile phone texts and calls.

TextIT uses mobile phones to provide interactive two-way text messaging for pregnant HIV-positive women to encourage them to attend postpartum clinics and have their infants tested for HIV.

Kemri Prevention from Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) Technical Advisor Eliud Akama said that they have designed and automated an interactive software that is able to send pre-programmed text messages to expectant women.

He said expectant mothers are enrolled into the system which also automatically determines their expected date of delivery.

Once that date is noted, the system will then determine the kind of messages to send to the mother at every pregnancy stage as she awaits delivery or depending on her pregnancy stage in addition to sending her encouraging messages.

He added that the system is pre-programmed to send those text messages at the time a woman feels will be convenient for her to receive the message as well as in the language she is comfortable with.

NURSES ON STANDBY

Mr Akama said that a nurse who is always on standby will then call the mothers and respond to their questions or concerns.

“This software has a functionality that enables pregnant women to interact with us.

“They can also send to us texts in the form of call back messages, questions, compliments or even pregnancy concerns.

This is a companion to the pregnant woman,” said Mr Akama in an interview with Nation.co.ke.

He said the system has been put on trial in six health facilities in Kisumu, Homa Bay and Migori counties and has seen an increase in the uptake of HIV testing among babies whose mothers are using it which is significantly higher than among mothers who did not receive the messages.

Consequently, it has led to increased clinical attendance and reduced child and maternal deaths, he added.

He added: “We were able to increase the uptake of infant HIV testing from the national average of 39 per cent to about 90 per cent.”

He revealed that post-partum follow ups have enabled health workers to check on the infant and mothers’ health from the time of delivery which also helps reduce post-natal deaths.

LIFESAVING INTERVENTIONS

“For the babies who are born (HIV) negative even though their mothers are positive, we put lifesaving interventions by giving them prophylaxis treatment and for those born positive, we put them on life saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) treatment so that we increase their survival rates,” he added.

The researcher said that at the moment, they are scaling up the intervention to 20 facilities within Nyanza region.

He pointed out that so far, they have reached 754 HIV infected women, tested 601 babies and sent a total of 12,565 messages.

He however noted that loss of mobile phones by some mothers has made it difficult for them to receive important texts.

He appealed for partnerships with donors in order to scale up TextIT to other counties.

“At the moment, when the expectant women visit the facilities, nurses are overwhelmed and busy. But they are able to spend time counselling them through the system and this is where this system fits in,” Mr Akama said.

The other Kemri researcher involved in the design of TextIT is Dr Thomas Odeny.

He presented the software during the HIV/Aids Maisha conference at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies last week.