China offers free mobile phone credit in the battle to fight tuberculosis

China is to test out a new weapon in the fight against the rising menace of a deadly, drug-resistant form of tuberculosis - offering free mobile phone credits to patients who take their medicines on time. The Telegraph reports.

The scheme, originally developed by students at MIT, offers free top-ups to sufferers who send text messages to health care centres with a unique code proving they have taken their drugs.

TB sufferers are often prescribed a cocktail of 15-20 pills, which they must take every day for six months to overcome tuberculosis, but many fail to complete the course, allowing the disease to build resistance to conventional drugs.

The mobile phone incentive scheme works by patients conducting their own urine tests using test-strips which, if they have taken their medicine properly, reveal a unique code which they SMS to a healthcare centre.

Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of a World Health Organization program to fight TB, said the SMS scheme would compliment face-to-face contact with health workers, enabling them to target those who stop taking their medicines when they start to feel better.

Read full article.

emily | 3:02 PM | Health Issues and SMS Alerts |
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2009/04/023197.htm

Tweet