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A Public-Private Partnership

Leading players in the mobile phone industry and the U.S. Government have joined forces to help fight HIV/AIDS and other health challenges in 10 African countries by 2010. Phones for Health is a cutting edge public-private partnership, which brings together mobile phone operators, handset manufacturers and technology companies - working in close collaboration with Ministries of Health, global health organisations and other partners - to use the widespread and increasing mobile phone coverage in the developing world to strengthen health systems.

The Phones for Health partners - the GSM Association's Development Fund, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Accenture Development Partnerships, Motorola, MTN and Voxiva are initially focused on 10 African countries, building on an already successful deployment in Rwanda. The partnership is also likely to be extended further in Africa and Asia to address tuberculosis, malaria and other infectious diseases. Phones for Health will allow health workers in the field to use a standard handset equipped with a downloadable application to enter health data. Once entered, the data is mapped and analyzed by the system and immediately available to health authorities at multiple levels via the web. The system also supports SMS alerting and notification and tools for communication and coordination with field staff.

"The explosive spread of mobile phone networks across the developing world has created a unique opportunity to significantly transform how countries can tackle global health challenges," said Dr. Howard Zucker, Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), representing the WHO at the Partnership's launch at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

The Phones for Health alliance builds on the partners' successful experience in Rwanda deploying a system built by Voxiva called TRACnet. Working in close co-operation with the Government of Rwanda and PEPFAR, the system has been used for the last two years to manage that country's national HIV/AIDS programme.

"Ensuring high quality treatment and care services for HIV/AIDS patients requires innovative ways of providing timely, relevant information to both program managers and service providers regardless of where services are being delivered," said Ambassador Mark Dybul, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.