The health workers and beneficiaries of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) Pampaida in Kaduna have commended leading telecommunications services provider, Airtel Nigeria, for its support to the Millennium Promise initiative, noting that the Telco has contributed immensely to ensuring that maternal health improves in northern Nigeria.
Speaking, recently, during an interactive session with select journalists at the Airtel Office in Kaduna, Eyitayo Ojo, Assistant team leader/health coordinator, Millennium villages project showered encomiums on Airtel Nigeria for throwing its full weight behind the health workers in Pampaida, saying that the telco’s ICT support has helped in educating the Community Health Workers (CHWs), also preserving lives, especially during emergency situations.
The Millennium Villages project, an initiative of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a science-based bottom-up approach to lifting rural villages out of the poverty trap that afflicts more than a billion people worldwide. The community-driven initiative currently operates in 12 sites in 10 sub-Saharan African countries where it tackles challenges related to health & nutrition, education, agriculture, livelihoods, gender equality and other vital issues.
Airtel is currently leveraging on its robust 3.75G Network to deploy a sophisticated mobile-phone platform dubbed CommCare to help support Community Health Workers and Home Based Care Providers to provide better, more efficient healthcare to the targeted beneficiaries.
Ojo also appreciated Airtel for deploying sophisticated ICT solutions to power the Millennium Village project, explaining that the bandwidth powers CommCare, a health-based software that empowers the community health workers in accomplishing their daily tasks.
“The Closer User Group (CUG) provided by Airtel to the 33 community health workers, three formative supervisors, 25 technical advisers, three ambulance drivers and four hospitals in the district allows for seamless communication amongst MVP health practitioners in Pampaida,” he said. Also speaking at the interactive session, Yohanna Dauda, a community health worker, stated that since Airtel’s intervention in the project, the operations of the community health workers at the Pampaida village have greatly improved.
“In the past, talking to a fellow community health worker was difficult, and was also very expensive; but now, we can easily talk to each other and advice each other as we carry out our work, thanks to Airtel.”
Echu Stephen, the community health workers’ manager also stated that Airtel’s intervention has truly improved maternal health in Pampaida.
“For monitoring and evaluation processes, it is essential that health information about households in Pampaida can be viewed. With Airtel’s intervention, our CommCare software is now fully utilized. Information can be sent and accessed in real time and this has helped greatly as we are able to instruct and supervise the activities of community health workers. For us, Airtel is not just touching lives but saving lives in Pampaida”.
Roseline Nuhu, a beneficiary of the MVP was also at the event, thanked Airtel Nigeria. For her, Airtel’s ICT solutions helped save her child.
“I am a mother of three, last year my child took ill and almost died. A CHW came to our rescue and I watched as he received instructions from his supervisor, called the ambulance driver and alerted the hospital in order to prepare to attend to us. If all these plans were not made before we got to the hospital, my child would have died. I am so grateful to Airtel for their contribution to our health care”. She said.
Kemi Ajumobi
