Scaling up access to health services beyond Tanzania and Kenya borders through wananchi afya digital mobile application

Abstract

Health services play an important role of assisting people who seek medical attention within the society. It can be argued that a healthy society can bring forth sustainable economic development to its full potential while an unhealthy society cannot. However, a free movement of people, labor and right to residence which was built across East Africa (EA) borders enabled Tanzania and Kenya borders to have enormous interactions. Subsequently, increase the risk of highly communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis and Sexually transmitted infections in such a way that medical attention is unavoidable along the borders. The evolution of smartphones and propagation of mobile applications (App) in 1990s have marked new opportunities for healthcare centers and medical education. Statistically, Android Operating System (OS) owns 83% of Africa’s mobile OS market. In addition, Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) and Kenya Digital have reported over 25.79 million and 22.86 million of internet users respectively, which is equivalent to 46% and 43% of internet penetration year 2020. This discloses the need for Android Mobile Application in order to improve access to health services and related-information both online and offline using Swahili and English language and integrate it with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool to monitor the most requested viewed content and measures change over time on existing health facilities to citizens and residents that travel across Kenya and Tanzania borders. The developed system received positive feedback from EA citizens and residents where 90.2% of the system evaluation conducted agreed upon App usage.