TMCnet News
USING NUMBERS TO IMPROVE OUR HEALTH(Daily Trust (Nigeria) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Hello, Ureporter, have you had a fever in the last two weeks? A) Yes or B) No." The question was sent out to more than 63,000 Ureporters on Wednesday, and by Monday the answers from a growing crowd of concerned and increasingly vocal Nigerians will be automatically fed realtime onto the Ureport website for anyone to see. The poll a simple question and the plethora of answers that follow is becoming a weekly ritual with a growing number of Nigerians interested in making their voices heard through the fast spreading phenomenon that's Ureport. They use the simple medium of SMS free on any mobile phone network and the figures from latest polls released every Monday can be astounding. Last week, a poll on water safety found that 41% of Ureporters "were not sure about the safety of the water they drink" and 38% of them do "nothing to ensure water safety." The poll results come to anyone able to register on the Ureport platform, simply by sending the word JOIN to shortcode 24453. By Wednesday, more than 63,000 had gotten the latest results which said, "More than half of Ureporters that responded to the poll said they get their drinking water from sachets (30%) and borehole (29%). "Another 15% reported an incident of diarrhoea within the family in the past one week." At the heart of the platform's revolutionary power is not just collecting data and letting figures sit on shelves for ages without use, but that the "data is used to influence decisions for the betterment of the people," says Anthonia ArchieAlogaga, a communications expert on the Ureport Nigeria team. "It isn't just talking about the issues, but about their voices being heard by those stakeholders from their constituencies, seeing those voices being used to bring change." For impact, it targets a crucial link between the grassroots and decision makers in hopes of amplifying individual voices into a loud unmistakable crowd noise that no sensible politician can ignore. Results feeding onto the Ureport site allow any viewer to see exactly what people in individual local government areas or wards are saying about water safety or their access to water. The hope is that the responses guide decision to site water projects in, say, Borno, instead of a school. The feedback mechanism built into Ureport helped at the height of Ebola outbreak in Nigeria. Alongside government sources and tweets, it helped spread kilobytes of information through SMS and answer perplexing questions about the virus. It also sent SMS asking Nigerians to ignore the saltbath therapy thought to help with Ebola, a prank started by a university student and her friends. One week after Ureport deployed at the height of Ebola, users on the platform doubled, and it has been growing ever since. Nigerians make up the biggest mobile phone market on the continent and are potential targets of Ureport Nigeria. Millions more could sign up soon and take part in polls, pose questions that could become polls, or get answers direct to their questions from the lips of experts all on the strength of a 160 character SMS. Similar versions of the platform have debuted across the world, from DRC and South Sudan to Indonesia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. Ugandans use it to encourage citizens to take part in family health days. Zambia uses the platform to propagate antiHIV/AIDS messages. The Nigerian version has been used for mass polls on open defecation and water, sanitation and hygiene, but is also amenable to use as a counseling tool. "It is about awareness. People are asking, 'I want to know what's happening, I want to know about malaria', which we have never had," says ArchieAlogaga. "We are going to get our voices amplified, we are not using Ureport as a tool to cause chaos, no, but to bring the change that we all desire." Imagine when a headline declares: "One million Nigerians report incidents of diarrhoea." The numbers can't be ignored. |