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Rose is a Group Village Head in central Malawi and is responsible for overseeing the well-being of a community of a 32-village community. She has long been concerned with the challenges women and children face in her community when trying to access health information and services. Women and children in Rose’s villages, and in Malawi as a whole, experience high rates of maternal and child mortality as a result of limited health care and lack of reliable information on safe motherhood and child health practices.
Today, women and children in Rose’s community are getting help from Chipatala cha pa Foni (health center hotline, in English), a toll-free maternal and health hotline that provides health information, advice and referrals. Service users also have the option of signing up for weekly voice or text messages to receive health tips & reminders to access preventive health care services. Village volunteers help women understand and use the service and ensure access for those without cellphones through project phones.
Chipatala cha pa Foni effectively extends the reach of the health system, allowing women and children to access health services from their home without having to travel long distances to the nearest health center. As a mother, grandmother and community leader, Rose has been a strong advocate for use of the Chipatala cha pa Foni in her community. Rose encourages those who have cell phones to lend them to those who cannot afford one, and has even contributed her own phone to those who don’t own phones. As a result, the Chipatala cha pa Foni program has had a vast reach into the community, receiving over 11,000 calls and registering nearly 6,000 women and caregivers of young children for the tips and reminders service.
Since 2000, VillageReach has worked to improve the performance of health systems, serving more than 10 million people in remote communities across sub-Saharan Africa.