Answering the Call: How VillageReach’s COVID 411 Campaign Fights the Pandemic with Innovative Mobile Solutions

At the end of June, the African continent had 400,000 COVID-19 cases, with local transmission increasing significantly. By the end of July, that case count had more than doubled. Health systems could quickly become overwhelmed, says VillageReach Vice President for Programs, Patrick Sikana. He outlined four principles that inform VillageReach’s COVID-19 response in a recent presentation to funders and other programmatic partners.

• Put government at the center, ensuring solutions reflect both government priorities and bolster (rather than replace) existing systems.
• Build on what we know works from our years of experience and solutions already in place.
• Collaborate and communicate clearly about what your organization has to offer and how you can support others. What we do together will be more effective than what we do alone.
• Respond to the present while designing for the future, building stronger systems for after the emergency.

VillageReach already had a solution with the power to fight COVID-19: Chipatala cha pa Foni (CCPF, or Health Center by Phone). CCPF was developed in Malawi with the Ministry of Health & Population and is now completely operated by the government with data support from VillageReach. VillageReach and Focusing Philanthropy’s COVID 411 campaign builds on that infrastructure to provide timely, accurate health information to millions of people. The Health Center by Phone technology is also being enhanced to deliver remote, phone-based training to more than 100,000 health workers in Malawi as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mozambique.

After the Malawian government designated CCPF as a national resource for COVID 19, the hotline became quickly overwhelmed. To meet the demand, the government recruited and trained an additional 25 hotline workers to double the hotline’s capacity, and Dr. Alinafe Kasiya, VillageReach Malawi Country Director, reported that his team was able to swiftly add COVID-19 messaging in multiple languages. “This increase in volume also increased demand for additional health-related information on nutrition, maternal health and HIV—a positive indication of an increase in broad health-seeking behavior,” said Dr. Kasiya.

The national health hotline, AlôVida, in Mozambique is also seeing a steep increase in demand, so the Mozambique Ministry of Health (MISAU), in collaboration with VillageReach and technology partner Viamo, is in the midst of upgrading the hotline to include interactive voice messaging and remote operators. The team will also soon launch a training for over 6,000 health workers in Mozambique with a Johns Hopkins University curriculum.

In the DRC, the Ministry of Health and VillageReach are working to create a WhatsApp tool with Praekelt.org in French and four local languages.

“This is not a sprint, but a marathon,” Sikana said. “We need these systems to spread accurate information about the vaccine and other COVID 19 treatments as well as availability.”

He pointed out that COVID-19 isn’t the first health crisis these nations have faced. “Being alive to the context is important, and we will be as transparent as possible to highlight the challenges we are facing so we can find the solutions to those barriers together,” he said. “That’s the only way to build a sustainable response.”

banner image: Hotline worker Monica Mutega answers phone calls for Malawi’s Chipatala cha pa Foni, or Health Center by Phone, in the Balaka district. As part of the transitioning to the Ministry of Health, the hotline relocated to Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city, where it is now housed in a specially refurbished building at the Ministry of Health’s Health Education Services Unit. Photo Credit: Paul Joseph Brown