A team of 20 Reaserchers drawn from Roll back Malaria Programme ,Institue of Tropical Disese Reaserch,Planning Commision,WHO calabar and the Nigerian Redcross of cross river state,are currently in the field conducting a survey on the impact of the LLINs distributed by the Canadian Redcross ,during the Last Intergrated Measles ,LLINs  campaign in december 2008.Data Dyne is heading the technology arm of the survey team and just note that data is being collecting using Personal Digital Assistance with the Open source software Episurveyor called in to action.Th

While spending my 6 hour layover in the airport of Lagos, Nigeria, I noticed numerous ads like the one pictured. More proof that Google gets it: the mobile phone is the computer for the world, and SMS is the dominant non-voice communications medium, and SMS needs things like search.

Today Yusuf Ibrahim (in photo, with staff from HealthBridge and Canadian Red Cross watching in the back) and I demonstrated EpiSurveyor on both PDAs and mobile phones to Dr. Iyam Ugot and his colleague Mr. Ndem A. Ndiyo. Dr. Ugot is a Special Advisor to the Nigerian government for the Roll Back Malaria program, and Mr. Ndiyo is an economic advisor to the government. Both expressed great interest in using EpiSurveyor on mobiles for ongoing work, which would be great.  Both indicated frustration with paper-based survey methods, and the long delays with getting data entered from paper.

Representatives of Canadian Red Cross, DataDyne, and HealthBridge met for a series of strategic meetings at the Axari Hotel in Calabar, Nigeria. This week there will be a PDA-based survey done using EpiSurveyor to determine the coverage rate of insecticide treated bednets among children less than five years old and pregnant women.  The group as a whole was eager to proceed, as evidenced by the photos attached.