Anoinette's Journey Home to the Upper East with MoTeCH

I joined MoTeCH not long ago. I believe it was the right time though as I had the opportunity to travel with the MoTeCH team to the Upper East region to train nurses on how to use mobile phones to register patients, especially pregnant woman and children under five years; to educate people from the eleven implementation CHPS zones about MoTeCH; and to launch the MoTeCH project, which intends to enable these community members to get better access to healthcare service delivery and information to improve upon their lives.


Growing up in the Upper East region, to be precise in Navrongo, I realised access to community healthcare service delivery was a problem in the past. It has always been my dream to help improve this precarious situation or be part of a system that strives to unlock the persistent high level of poor health service delivery in our society. Thanks to Navrongo Health Research Center for improving healthcare service delivery in various communities. Ghana Health Service has also saved the situation by providing additional clinics and CHPS compounds at various communities in the district.

I have also grown to understand the needs of the people of Kassena-Nakana West district. I have realized that healthcare service delivery is a basic need for the people in the district. However, I believe that introducing MoTeCH to the district will make a great impact on the lives of the people of Kasen-Nakana West district and Upper East Region as a whole.

DURBAR
The people of Navrongo speak commonly Kasem and Nakam. They are very friendly and hospitable. I had the opportunity to interact with some communities during our durbars. I realized that organizing durbars in the communities is an effective way of communicating with the community members. During the durbars I got convinced that the messages about MoTeCH went down well with the people based on the question they asked, though there were some few issues in relation to Ghana Health services.

What interested me most in the various communities were the traditional songs, drumming and dancing; after a very long time I had the opportunity to rehearse my traditional dancing skills.

TRAINING

Training the nurses on the mobile phone was yet another aspect that exposed me to new things about the mobile phone technology that MoTeCH will be deploying. I found the training very exciting, because the nurses found it very interesting and were excited about the impact it could have on their work. Nurses were smart in understanding the operation of the phone and the various studies very quickly. We encountered poor network services which makes uploading data into MoTeCH system sometimes difficult. I think this will be a challenge for MoTeCH, though fortunately nurses can save forms on their phone to upload later when they have network. Some of the nurses raised the concerns of their facilities not having electricity or solar panels to enable them to charge the phones. Notwithstanding these few challenges, so far things are moving on well.

-- Posted by Antoinette Akanlise - MoTeCH Support Center Agent