Text Messages for Improved Health Care: A Lesson in Advocacy?
BBC news highlights a study published in the Lancet showing that text messages sent to health care workers in Kenya improved adherence to malaria treatment regime from around 20% to 50%:
Health workers in the study were sent text messages twice a day, five days a week, for six months.
An example of the sort of sent was: “advise mother to finish all AL [artemether-lumefantrine] doses over three days even if the child feels better after two doses”.
At the beginning of the study, 20.5% of children were correctly managed, this increased to 49.6% after the six month study.
Is there a lesson here for the palliative care community in India which should recognize that poor advocacy has been its biggest weakness over the last decade and a half?