Though the use of mobile phones is permeative in my community today, its application in healthcare delivery is remote. It has never crossed my mind as to how to use a mobile phone to deliver useful health information to clients and health workers until I joined the MoTeCH team about a month ago. There, I began to appreciate the dynamism of technology, that a mobile application will not only ease the work load on the nurse but will regularly send useful and time-specific information to the pregnant woman and children. This is a wonderful innovation which will go a long way to improve the health status of rural communities. Indeed, access to health information is one major constraint that accounts for most unfortunate occurrences in healthcare delivery in rural communities. Thus, I do not only see MoTeCH as a means to unburdening the workload of the nurse and disseminating information to pregnant women and children, but an appropriate and cost-effective intervention that will promote health education in impoverished communities.
Working with Grameen Foundation is a rare opportunity that will push me into new directions whilst at the same time consolidating my vast medical experience with technology. I see it as a chance to indirectly contribute to the provision of quality healthcare services to my people.
Over the past 3 weeks, the team has been training community health officers (CHOs), midwifes and other supporting staff in the selected CHPS zones and health centres on the use of the mobile phones. These training sessions were interspersed with durbars which all fun to partake.
TRAINING
It is amazing to note that although I have not received a formal one-on-one training on the use of the MoTeCH mobile phone system, except for a couple of non-formal sessions with Maria (MoTeCH Field Officer), the system is intuitive enough for me to have been able to learn it very quickly. I have therefore participated in training the nurses in a comprehensible manner that is overwhelming. I felt honoured when I was called to take some august visitors from Monitor Group, South Africa, to see how MoTeCH was training health staff on the use of the mobile phones. I took them to Kajelo CHPS compound. There, I took the nurses through a complete training session while the visitors observed. Afterwards, the nurses were singularly interviewed. This was a great moment to interact and meet with new people and to demonstrate how MoTeCH will be working in the field. I was delighted to realize the visitors were impressed by everything; that gives me more strength to go on.
Overall, the training of community health staff has been very interesting. Most of the younger staff readily pick things quite easily, (they can use the appropriate forms when given simple and complicated scenarios), whereas the much older midwifes have various levels of difficulty. Most find it difficult to even access the MoTeCH application in the phone. Thus, for them, we have trained 
other supporting staff who will assist them.
Left: Williams training a midwife at Sirigu Health Centre
Notwithstanding the above challenges, we have trained virtually all the staff target to use the mobile phones on two separate sessions.
At the end of the week, we also took all mobile phones that were given to these nurses for practice back to base for configuration prior to final deployment. We also took note of the various outreach dates and venues for the various facilities to enable us plan adequately for launching and mass registration.
DURBAR
In the course of the week, we participated in a Durbar at Nayagnia to commission a CHPS compound. The event was grand with the Upper East Regional Minister, the Regional Director of Health Service, Kirsten Gagnaire (Project Manager, MoTeCH) and a host of others from Columbia University, DHMT etcetera present. The community turn-out was great! The people drummed and danced with ecstasy. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to dance to the local tunes. I hope to get that some other time. I had to leave the grounds with the team just in time to have a training session at Chiana and Katiu.
Williams Kwarah is a MoTeCH Field Officer, and who very recently joined the project. He is from Navrongo.
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