Celebrating Impact: Cradle count; A new mobile app designed to help reduce infant/maternal mortality in Nigeria ....

A new mobile application that can help to reduce the scourge of infant and maternal mortality has been developed by a young and innovative Nigerian, Miss K. Nwokolo. This mobile application is called Cradle count.

It is to help reduce to the barest minimum errors in estimating the expected date of delivery, since one of the major challenges faced by pregnant women in Nigeria and in Africa at large, is unexpected delivery which in many cases have led to delivery related complications resulting in infant and maternal mortality.

This is very promising I must say because currently about ninety nine percent of the 830 daily maternal mortality cases that occur globally are recorded in Africa. One could easily link this trend to the poor infrastructural health facilities and inaccessible community health services, hence, tackling obvious and preventable causes like unexpected delivery can be a big pass in tackling infant and maternal mortality.

Improved access to skilled care during and after delivery, can lead to significant reductions in childbirth/delivery related complications. With the use of this mobile phone application proper preparations for skilled birth attendants at birth can be made.

Basically what this mobile phone application does is to inform pregnant women of the number of days left to the delivery of the baby and it has programmed alerts that remind pregnant mothers to register and follow up with their antenatal care provider.

This is a proactive approach to the prevention of cases of infant and maternal mortality. In a statement obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) earlier this month in Lagos, the innovative health care app could revolutionize the health sector in Nigeria and Africa by helping to reduce the number of deliveries that take place in the home setting without the assistance of skilled birth attendants.

Written By Jimoh Waliu