IN need of an ob-gyn? In Burma (Myanmar), it can be a struggle.
For the country’s women, reproductive and sexual health care often remains out of reach – and it’s having deadly consequences. Each year, 2,800 women die due to complications from pregnancy, childbirth and post-natal care.
While abortions are illegal, studies estimate over 246,000 women seek them each year. Health experts believe most of these deaths are preventable – pointing to both an acute lack of doctors and information.
In Burma’s conservative society, discussions about sexuality and family planning are taboo, and misinformation rampant. Even the government restricts public reproductive care services to married women.
Global health NGO Population Services International (PSI) and Yangon-based social tech startup Koe Koe Tech believe the solution is in part pocket-size.
The two teamed up to create maymay, Burma’s first maternal and child health mobile app. Alongside this, PSI, is using social media to teach women about family planning options and to answer medical questions about contraception and pregnancy.
In five years, Burma has transformed from being one of the world’s least connected nations to having over half its population owning a mobile phone. While smartphone ownership is now at 75 percent, local web content had been slow to catch up.
“Our mobile health tools, whether it’s Facebook or the app, are all about giving women information and options on what they need to keep themselves and their families healthy,” PSI’s Communications Manager for Digital Media Perrie Briskin said.
Maymay, which helps expecting and new mothers preserve their health and that of their newborns, currently boasts over 30,000 monthly active users.
Inspired by the approach of gamified learning apps, the app retools health messages conceived for new and expecting mothers by the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) into colourful illustrated quizzes users answer for each week of their pregnancy. Maymay also features a hotline to PSI’s doctors for questions, nutritional advice and a clinic locator service.
Koe Koe Tech is both the owner and technology lead, while PSI verifies and strengthens the medical content, with help from ob-gyns and nutritionists.
“The underlying motivation is to help improve the country,” Koe Koe Tech CEO Michael Lwin said.
“We have 1,500 telemedicine consultations per month with PSI doctors and we are trying to expand that by working on distribution in remote areas, but it’s as big a challenge as designing the app itself.”
That has meant efforts to translate maymay into the minority languages spoken in some of Burma’s most rural areas. Yet reaching the most secluded populations remains a struggle.
SEE ALSO: Child labour and low wages: The real cost of producing fashion in Burma
Other issues are unique to Burma’s lightning fast mobile transformation.
“We have had close to a quarter million people try to download our app on the Google Store and they can’t because they don’t have an email address,” said Lwin. He’s been appealing to Google to change it.
Burma’s mobile first revolution has meant that for most Burmese, Facebook is the Internet. This is why when PSI wanted to create an online reproductive and sexual health hotline for women, it started with the social media giant.
https://asiancorrespondent.com/2017/05/burma-facebook-can-ob-gyn/#dIvc7zeiTVCxxP7v.97