Nakuru County government has digitized maternal health-care services in an effort to reduce maternal mortality in the County.
The County Director of administration and planning Dr. Joy Mugambi said the County was digitizing maternal health information through digitization of antenatal care booklet for mothers.
Dr. Mugambi explained that the new technology dubbed, “Mama’s hub” application was a significant referral tool that was aimed at ensuring timely maternal interventions from the community level, during the mothers’ pregnancy journey.
The application, she stated would enable community health volunteers refer the expectant mothers to health facilities near them for any antenatal services.
Speaking during the Mama hub user acceptance testing workshop, Dr. Mugambi said they were piloting the technology in three health facilities in Nakuru city including Bondeni, Annex and Bahati before expanding it to other health facilities.
The Director said the application was developed by a consortium of partners including Kabarak, Strathmore universities, Technical University of Mombasa Intelillsoft consulting and e-med solutions.
The Mama hub technology is part of the recent move by the Nakuru County government to digitize health care services with the recent introduction of Electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS) used to enhance primary health-care service delivery at the household’s level.
According to the department of health at the County, the e-CHIS system was adopted from the Community Health digitization efforts contained in the National Community Health Strategy 2020-2025 and was being supported by Global Community Fund through AMREF Health Africa.
The e-CHIS system was aimed at digitizing information on community health services across the County and is said to revolutionize Primary healthcare service delivery to the lowest unit which is the household.
The system is used by Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) to register family members from their units, collect data, and medical records before submitting them to their linked health facilities for use in a sickness scenario, which is said to reduce inefficiencies that have been experienced in data collection, analysis, and reporting.
By Esther Mwangi
