Statistics by the illiterate: The local traditional birth attendant registers births, children who die immediately after birth, stillbirths and the illness or death of the mother by placing small stones in a box. (Credit: Jørn Braa)
Jeff Allen is in Sierra Leone helping to set up a health information system in Freetown. He wrote to tell me about the ‘hi tech’ solution they came across for collecting health data. The traditional birth attendant places a small stone in a hole directly in front of the image of either a healthy child, stillborn, etc. While I agree with Jeff’s scorn for mobile phone based tracking systems in favor of this more simplistic tool it does beg the question: How hard would it be to build those 5 icons in to a sleek mobile interface?
Jeff is posting semi-regularly over at jra’s thoughts. Be sure to follow him for at least the next two weeks until he gets back to Switzerland. The story I mention above was picked up by Science Daily and a few other media outlets.
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