Program: Ghana Summer 2012
Have you ever been pregnant or know someone who is pregnant? Have you ever been in a situation where you would have to act as a doctor, giving advice or responding to questions asked by a pregnant woman? If pregnant, is the doctor's advice enough or do you still come back home and ask your relatives petty questions on how to live? Most of those you may be asking, may have little or no experience of what you are going through and therefore may not be sure of the answers they give.
Well, the solution to this problem is CliGO. CliGO is an SMS based system that sends free pre and post natal health tips to expectant mothers covering three main areas: Preventive and precautionary measures, general health tips and dietary health tips. These tips are all designed to suit a specific week or period of pregnancy. Expectant mother can register for free by texting their name, hospital code and number of weeks of pregnancy to a short code.
Our main aim is not to make money, but to be able to establish a positive influence in the lives of the people living in our communities. This project would be funded with grants from NGOs, government organizations and private donors. Investors' names would be added to the text messages as a form of advertisement.
To be able to maintain our market share, we would liaise with the Ministry of Health and the National Health Insurance Authority to make sure that all expectant mothers would be advised to register onto the system.
CliGO is an SMS based system that sends pre and post natal health tips on diet and precautionary measures to expectant mothers who are subscribed. This service is free and would be funded with grants from governmental and non-governmental organisations. The system sends messages in three forms:
> General health tips
> Dietary health tips
> Preventive and precautionary health tips
The general health tips cover the day-to-day activities of expectant mothers such as sleeping postures and so on. The dietary health tips cover only the dietary needs of the expectant mothers. That includes special foods that should be taken and why they should be taken, these are also more specific to the exact period of pregnancy. The preventive and precautionary health tips are also specific to the period (number of weeks) of pregnancy. During later stages of implementation, voice messaging and voice calls would be added to the system to cater for the less educated in the community.
