Speech for the Minister of Health at the launch of adolescent mobisite and anniversary of Momconnect, Kt Motubatse Community Centre, Soshanguve
Programme Director, Me Precious Matsoso,
The US Ambassador, Mr Patrick Gaspard,
The MMC Health and Social Development of Tshwane Metro, Me Eulanda Mabusela,
MECs for Health in the provinces,
HODs of Health present,
Representatives of sister departments,
Our many partners (too many to name),
Distinguished guests,
Members of the media,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
A very good morning!
Today is a very auspicious occasion! Three hundred and sixty four days ago I stood in this very same spot and together with Ambassador Gaspard we launched the MomConnect programme.
I have come back one year later to give feedback on the MomConnect programme – and again I am joined by Ambassador Gaspard. In addition, I am here today with our partners to launch a brand new initiative – an adolescent and youth mobisite, which uses social media which young people love to provide them with information to keep them healthy!
I am therefore very pleased that Deputy Minister Manamela has taken time off from studying to be here with us today. Before I go into the details of these programmes, both of which are aimed to improve the health of pregnant women and their children, early in life as well as later, I want to briefly explain why this is so important for our country and out people.
Early today Mr Herve de Lys, the country director of UNICEF, officially handed to be a review of maternal, new-born, women’s, child and adolescent health services and nutrition in South Africa.
This review was carried out by many experts in the field to assess how South Africa was doing in the implementation of our Maternal, Newborn, child, women’s health and nutrition strategy which we adopted in 2012. It is very important to have independent reviews of our health programmes and we asked the United Nations organisations, led by UNICEF, as well as our development partners and academics to review our programme.
I would like to thank everybody involved in this review. The United Nations organisations provided resources for the review and many of their staff participated, particularly those from UNICEF, WHO, UNAIDS and UNFPA. Similarly PEPFAR provided resources and staff as did many of its implementing partners. The Department for International Development of UK were very generous with funding the review.
This review has over a hundred pages of findings and recommendations and it is not possible in the short time that I have available to give a comprehensive report back. So very selectively I have chosen some of the things that are pertinent to today’s event and I will quote from the review:
“There have been substantial strides in improving maternal and child health outcomes over the last few years. The country has dramatically scaled up the HIV and ART program with increasing numbers of women reached through the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV –also known as PMTCT –and more numbers of HIV positive children are receiving treatment. These efforts have likely contributed to increased life expectancy, but more needs to be done to reduce preventable deaths of women, mothers and children”
Out of all the priorities the report picked on two groups and said South Africa should strengthen its focus on:
- Adolescent girls
- Mothers and children in the first 1000 days of life
In this regard one of the most important tools that we have to monitor the health of the infant is the Road to Health Booklet. Every child should have this Road to Health Booklet. The booklet is given free of charge to every child born in SA, one for boys and one for girls because they grow differently from birth. This Booklet is your child's passport to health.
The Road to Health Booklet has important information to help parents and caregivers to keep track of your child's immunisation status, nutritional status and growth and development. Make sure that your child is fully immunized so that they don’t get diseases such as measles, diarrhoea and pneumonia. This booklet also provides information on appropriate feeding and when to seek urgent medical attention (general danger signs).
The review also recommends and I quote that we: “design a mobile app linking adolescents and youth to available sexual and reproductive health services nationally.”
We are responding to this recommendation by launching the adolescent and youth mobisite today.
My last quote from the review is that we should: “Promote early pregnancy identification, recognise and respond to danger signs for mothers and babies”
I am very pleased that we have partly responded to this recommendation by launching the MomConnect programme last year.
Let me turn now to the first birthday of Momconnect! This time last year we launched Momconnect. At that time we were heading into uncharted waters. I instructed my officials that not only did I want pregnant mothers to get educational messages but that I also wanted these women to be able to give feedback about the quality of the services that they received.
So what has happened since the launch?
We have trained nearly 34 000 health workers on how to register pregnant women on MomConnect and 94% of all public health facilities in the country have been registering women on MomConnect. This represents 3 731 facilities so we can see that MomConnect has spread right through the length and breadth of the country.
Five hundred and three thousand four hundred and five (503 405) women have been registered and are receiving health messages through MomConnect. This is indeed a great achievement and makes this programme the largest of its kind in the world. However we need to ensure that every single mother who comes to our services is offered the MomConnect service. We need to get all pregnant women connected every year.
The direct feedback from mothers is extremely positive. We have received nearly 50,000 requests for more information on a range of topics, including issues like breastfeeding, family planning after pregnancy and sexual health.
Up to the end of last week we received 442 complaints about services and 2 564 compliments. For those of you good at arithmetic that works out to nearly 6 compliments for every complaint.
The complaints that we receive generally fall into three categories: staff attitudes; long waiting times; shortage of some medicines. I will provide some examples and to show that we really know where there complaints are coming from I will mention the province and the name of the clinic.
Here are a few examples of complaints:
This is a complaint about Mamelodi Hospital here in Tshwane, Gauteng: a patient complained that pregnant moms were treated badly in an antenatal session when they could not give correct answers about breastfeeding!
A patient that attends Mphanama Clinic in Sekhukhune, Limpopo reported that she was chased from the clinic for going to collect medication and also wanted to consult as she was not feeling well! A pregnant woman who attends Tlhabane Community Health Centre in Dr Kenneth Kuanda district in the North West Province complained of long waiting times because of shortage of staff.
As you can see we know exactly where the complaints are coming from. This enables us to take action rapidly and solve the problems. Here are some examples of the problems were have resolved because of Momconnect:
- Lack of some medication – like iron tablets (which we solved by checking stocks in the provincial depots and national supply challenges)
- Insufficient staff in clinics (solved by moving staff around)
- Lack of furniture and equipment (fast tracked procurement)
- Poor staff attitudes (Batho Pele workshops held)
We are also dealing with these issues through the Phakisa Ideal Lab process that was announced by the President last year. We are working hard to improve the services that we provide in all our facilities as announced by the President last week when we provided feedback to the nation on progress.
Health workers around the country who are providing a good service to pregnant women and their children, who make up the vast majority, should recognise that pregnant moms are voting for you overwhelmingly!
Some examples of the compliments received by the Helpdesk located in the national Department of Health are (and I quote):
- “I just want to thank MomConnect for teaching me many things on my pregnancy
- It was so good that sister Phillips attended to me, she was so helpful
- Thank you for your advice keep them going, keep up de good wok guys
- Good service at Dr Hugo Nkabide; everything is good they treat people will care and love
- Crown mines clinic Johannesburg South... good service... and kind nurses that actually care!
I am giving actual names so that you can see that we are getting information from the ground to which we can respond – by providing positive feedback when we get compliments and taking action when we receive complaints. This is what we have been doing for the past year – this is what I believe will also help us to improve our services.
To get more information from moms about their experiences we also conducted a survey last month with 2000 randomly selected registered users of MomConnect.
The primary findings from this are:
- Over 98% (1962) of these users felt that MomConnect messages had helped them
- Over 80% (1611) had shared the messages with friends or their partners
- Over 80% (1606) reported that the messages helped them to remember their clinic visits
- Over 75% (1531) of users reported that the messages had helped them feel more prepared for childbirth and delivery
- Over 70% (1414) actually wanted more messages than the 100 plus messages they already receive during their pregnancy and the first year of the child's life
So it is clear that Momconnect is making a difference. All this has been made possible with the support of health workers, pregnant women as well as the generous support of the US government through Pepfar, Johnson & Johnson and the Elma Foundation.
We are not resting on our laurels and before the end of this year we will have a nurses component of MomConnect. You can’t have mothers going to the clinics and asking for things without supporting the nurses and very soon we will be going live with sending messages to midwives and supporting them educationally and in other ways. This component is thanks to support from the Discovery Foundation.
Lastly but not least I want to thank the mobile network operators for giving us significant discounts on their services to make MomConnect a viable reality. I am planning on twisting their arms to further reduce and hopefully eliminate charges to this programme.
Before I leave the topic of MomConnect it would be inappropriate of me not to mention our host clinic. I wish to thank the local community for allowing us to come here for a second time. I also wish to thank the midwives and management of KT Motubatse community health centre for the splendid job that they are doing with MomConnect.
Since the launch last year up to the end of July 2015 they have managed to register 1453 pregnant moms on MomConnect. This represents close to 100% of the antenatal patients booking. A really splendid achievement and ladies and gentlemen you will join me in putting your hands together for this.
Programme Director, distinguished guests,
The third component of todays’ function is the launch of the Department of Health’s own adolescent and youth mobisite. You will remember at the beginning of my speech I said that one of the recommendations of the independent review of maternal and child health services in South Africa were that we should prioritise adolescents.
It gives me great pleasure to inform you that today the Department will increase its efforts to meet the needs of young people to know more.
Everywhere you go you will find people, but especially young people staring at, and playing with, their cell phones. Now they will be able to access relevant health information on a range of topics at the push of a finger.
The mobisite that I am launching today will give information that is appropriate for three different age categories of youth. These are the young adolescents aged 10-14; the older adolescents aged 15-19 and the youth aged 20-24. All three groups are transitioning from childhood to adulthood but have different needs. Once a youth has registered, the content will be targeted to match his or her age-group.
So what is the aim of this service?
We will provide information that will cater to the health and developmental needs of adolescents and youth by providing them with factual information that will enable them to make the right choices. Choices that will enable them to live healthy and full lives.
We want to enable and empower adolescents and the youth of our country to make choices that take them away from indulging in risky behaviour that can lead to things like substance abuse and sexually transmitted infections including HIV, amongst other risks.
We want young people to make choices to develop their bodies and minds to the fullest extent possible; to live life to the full but to be consequent in what they choose to do and what they choose not to do.
Relationship issues are very important to young people and this mobisite gives guidance around making good relationship choices, with practical advice and tips. Bullying is a challenge for many young people, and this topic is tackled too.
This Mobisite has a number of special features:
- It will also enable young people to interact with factual information.
- It will have an expert live chat line where young people can ask questions with experts in various health fields. I hope to give a brief demonstration of this at the end of my talk.
- The mobisite will conduct rapid surveys on topics of interest to the youth and put the results of these surveys back onto the mobisite for people to understand what others are thinking and doing.
- Support &help services listed on the site will help to connect young people to call centres or specialised counselling services should they need these services.
With this background we now come to the point of launching the mobisite. The department launched a competition several months ago for youth to be creative about naming this mobisite which would serve their needs. We want this programme to serve the needs of youth and to be guided by their needs and advice. We advertised this competition nationally and we have some winners!
I will ask the Programme Director to help us with this part of the programme.
