According to UNICEF, more than 50 percent of women in Uganda don’t complete the 4 recommended antenatal visits. Most women in Uganda have registered late antenatal care attendance, averagely at 5.5 months of pregnancy.
Women in rural areas of Uganda are two times less likely to attend antenatal care than the urban women. The inadequate utilization of ANC (antenatal care) is greatly contributing to persisting high rates of maternal and neonatal mortality in Uganda.
Much sensitization has to be done specifically in these rural areas to empower pregnant women and their husbands as to improve ANC attendance and utilization.
Reasons, why women don’t attend ANC, are; They use TBA because they are near and accessible, because their husbands decided or because those are the only people they know. They considered getting an antenatal Card as an importance of ANC. Other reasons are; due to demands at work so they don’t get enough time, they have no problems during pregnancy, some are advised by friends.
Our solution;
At Zaala Care Center, we increase antenatal care attendance by sending them automated localized voice & text weekly updates. Our approach uses interactive voice response (IVR) technology to offer mobile screenings to pregnant women and new mothers.
We do this in a unique way by using interactive voice response technology (IVR) to offer mobile screenings to pregnant women and new mothers. In this, the user is automatically reminded of the visit. In the first year of our existence, we have registered 1000 users of our service with 945 live births. When it is time for a prenatal or postnatal screening, a registered user receives a text message with a code that can be redeemed by “flashing” the Zaala Care phone number to trigger a free call back.
