airtime transfers fight TB

July 8th, 2008
Latin America / LAC, m-banking, m-health, text messaging

So this news is a month old, but it is still interesting.

MIT’s X out TB program has gotten some attention lately. Check out MobileActive’s interview with some of the team members for details.

The program, piloted in Nicaragua, encourages daily compliance with the (very strict, very lengthy, very important) anti-TB medication regimen in a cost-effective and very innovative way.  Patients must urinate on a reactive strip every day. If the patient has taken the TB medication, the strip will change to reveal a code.  By sending that code via SMS to their health care providers, he or she can prove that they have taken the medication, without requiring a daily visit from a health care worker.

That’s cool enough already.  But then, to get at the behavioral part of the puzzle, the X out TB program offers cell phone minutes as rewards for patients who have successfully communicated with the health care center on say, 25 of 30 days in a month.

I tagged this post as m-health and m-banking because this is an example of a situation in which the easy and cost-free transfer of minutes/airtime/load is actually a better solution than m-banking funds delimited in actual currencies. This is a good cause and a specialized case, so operators can be approached to provide the minutes at a reduced rate, or even for free.  I’m sure a whole host of regulatory and accounting issues would prevent them from doing this with m-banking funds.

Also interesting – the MobileActive piece points to the ubiquity of cell phone minutes as something of value to participants.

The team also changed the incentives for the project. Initially, they had intended to give people who stuck with their treatment a microfinance loans. “The whole goal with microfinance is you get a peer system from your family,” said Gomez-Marquez. “But when we went to Nicaragua they really insisted on cell phone minutes.” The minutes can either be uploaded to the user’s phone or the team can pass out pre-paid phone cards.

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