Through the project, the Burkinabe government and international partners aim to leverage digital technologies to strengthen the country's health system.

Last Tuesday, in Kombissiri, Burkinabe Health Minister Dr. Robert Lucien Kargougou launched the pilot phase of Mhealth-Burkina, a mobile e-health app developed to improve community health. 

The pilot phase will be carried out in two health districts, the Boromo and Kombissiri districts namely. It is aimed at collecting and transmitting integrated disease management data. 

According to Minister Robert Kargougou, improving community health is one of the key priorities to strengthen the health system. "In some areas without health workers, only community-based health workers provide care. So, it is important to digitalize their activities through Mhealth-Burkina, which enables us to collect data on all the activities those community-based health workers perform daily," he said.

In 2019, in partnership with UNICEF and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the country developed a mobile data digitization application called "mHealth." The application aims to improve patient care and monitoring, as well as on-site drug stock controls. 

The application, which works offline, transfers the collected data by SMS to a secure server. This server is accessible to community health center teams, health districts, regional health managers, and national health authorities.  

According to the Health Minister, the pilot phase marks the beginning of the digitization of community health workers’ activities. About fifteen modules will be integrated into Mhealth-Burkina to allow the workers to instantly report the needed data. 

By 2023, the app will be launched in seven regions covering about 7,500 health workers. Its ultimate goal is to cover every village located more than five kilometers from a health facility. 

Samira Njoya