For Khoudja Samb in the Senegalese village area of Potou, today was “Bring Your Film Crew to Work” day. As part of the One Million Community Health Workers campaign, we are documenting what life is like when you combine technology and training with dedicated populations in remote areas.
For a Community Healthworker named Khoudja Samb in the Senegalese village area of Potou, today was “Bring Your Film Crew to Work” day. As part of the One Million Community Health Workers program, we are documenting what life is like when you combine technology and training with dedicated populations in remote areas.
The program is a sprint to the finish line, specific to health care, before 2015. That’s when the Millennium Development Goals officially conclude. Right now there are about 200,000 Community Healthcare Workers on the entire continent of Africa – but just a fraction of those have high-technology tools and connectivity at their fingertips.
When this number gets to a million, the difference will be stunning. Today, we witnessed what happens when one community worker moves around with good tools and connectivity.
Khoudja Samb has as backpack full of instructions and measuring tools. These days her feature phone has been updated to a Sony smartphone. In her backpack are laminated instructions for simple health procedures like checkups or vaccinations.
The smartphone comes in handy for a number of purposes. On the most basic level, the smartphone allows Khoudja Samb to enter data about the patients she meets and access historical information about them. But when a problem arises, she can call to a nearby clinic, or call for an ambulance, or otherwise seek answers to questions she does not have immediately – for example, by searching for additional information.
For Khoudja Samb’s patients, it provides audio and video instructions. Expectant mothers can get a lesson on breastfeeding, for example.
Yesterday, this Community Health Worker met with one young girl who was feverish. With a rapid-diagnostic tool, malaria could be ruled out. Another baby had severe diarrhea. Khoudja Samb was able to administer some medication to alleviate the problem and try to rehydrate the baby.
Among the other villagers she met were small children who were measured and accounted for as part of ChildCount+, an m-health platform where Ericsson is also playing a supporting role.
As the film crew (@RYOT) took pictures and recorded the sounds of the visits, a gaggle of 40 or so children entertained the rest of us by raising their eyebrows, clapping hands, asking our names, wanting their photos to be taken. On a personal level, this is where the visit becomes even more moving. You can’t help but look at them and wonder what their future will be.
In so many years of working at Ericsson and reporting on our projects – from the far northern border shared by Russia, Finland and Norway – to the jungles of the Amazon – this is my first trip to a Millennium Village in Africa. These are the places that Jeffrey Sachs talks about – where mobile connectivity is the most transformative technology to ever come to humanity. These are the places that Elaine Weidman comes back from, determined more than ever to keep up momentum and enable communications for all.
We are proud to support the One Million Community Health Worker campaign and build a sustainable, healthy future for all. This is where the difference is palpable. Where one Community Health Worker will continue to walk from house to house throughout the region, with a tool in her hand that can make those kids’ future a healthier one.
Dodi Axelson is a multimedia producer at Ericsson headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, where she makes videos about Ericsson news and employees and about the latest telecom innovations. In addition she takes to the stage to moderate large Ericsson events. She has been asking the important questions ever since she started her journalism career in newsradio in Seattle, Washington.
