Nairobi — The phenomenal growth of mobile telephony across Africa has improved communication, spurred commerce and opened up remote regions.

Now, the technology could become the weapon of choice to fight one of the continent's most intractable problems -- disease.

In the latest health initiative to tap into ICT, Technology Partnership -- a joint venture between the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation-- has announced the expansion of its mobile health programme to help far-flung health workers share critical data.

The partnership between the UN and Vodafone foundations was created in October 2005, with a £10 million ($20 million) commitment from the latter matched by £5 million ($10 million) from the UN body.

Through the project, the two organisations and the World Health Organisation will expand the use of an open-source application known as EpiSurveyor to 22 African countries by the end of this year.

EpiSurveyor was developed by the non-profit organisation, DataDyne.org, and can be downloaded to handheld devices such as mobile phones, enabling healthcare workers to track data.

The system has already been pilot-tested in Kenya and Zambia. Rolling it out to all 22 target countries is expected to cost $2 million.

"EpiSurveyor allows health workers in urban as well as rural areas to easily collect, manage and share clean and timely programme-monitoring data," said Dr Balcha Girma Masresha, medical officer in the immunisation programme in the African Region of the WHO.

"The introduction of this technology is enabling health workers to better understand and identify the strengths and shortcomings of their programmes, so that they can actively work toward continuous improvement."

Since last year, health workers from Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Benin, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Madagascar and Senegal have been trained to use EpiSurveyor.

"Technology has a major role to play in enabling the international community to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals for health, including reducing child and maternal mortality," said Andrew Dunnett, director of the Vodafone Foundation in a statement.

The latest initiative underlines the growing role of ICT in medicine in the region. Last July, the African Medical Research Foundation (Amref) unveiled a programme to offer continuous medical education (CME) to 500 nurses at Kenya's main referral medical facility, the Kenyatta National Hospital through its Virtual Nursing School.

In the course of the five-year programme, Amref will use computer-based modules to reach nurses at the institution through e-learning, helping them upgrade from being enrolled nurses to registered community health nurses. This way, the nurses will not have to leave their workstations to undertake CME.