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| Midwife Maena Nhur Desita administers a vaccine ©UNICEF Indonesia/2015 |
Kedoya Utara is one of the poorer neighborhoods in Jakarta. Sitting between megamalls and skyscrapers, this area struggles with makeshift living conditions, polluted waterways and unreliable electricity.
There is one subject of
particular concern in Kedoya Utara – immunization rates among children are very
low. This puts them at the risk of contracting life-threatening diseases such
as measles and diphtheria.
“There is an equity gap in
Jakarta and around Indonesia – children from poor families, especially those in
slum areas, are not reached regularly for their full vaccination doses,” UNICEF
Indonesia Health Specialist Dr. Kenny Peetosutan says.
“Children who are not immunized
can be a potential threat to other children in their community,” Dr. Peetosutan
says. “So by ensuring that each child receives all the required vaccines, we can
eventually protect the whole community.”
Neighborhoods like Kedoya
Utara present a number of challenges for health workers. It’s particularly difficult
to track and monitor each and every child – which is fundamentally important to
make sure they get all their relevant vaccinations.
So in 2015, UNICEF begun
to pilot RapidPro technology in seven sub-districts around Jakarta. RapidPro is
a programme that collects information by sending and receiving bulk SMS text
messages.
The technology opens new communication
channels among local authorities, health workers and community members. This
data is then monitored over time.
“I am especially worried
about measles,” says midwife Maena Nhur Desita who works in Kedoya Utara. She’s out administering vaccines at a
local Posyandu. During the hour that she is stationed there, only a few mothers
bring in their children.
But this is slowly starting
to change. Her team begun using RapidPro technology to obtain information
directly from the community to understand the reasons for poor attendance rates.
Health workers now know where and how to focus their efforts.
Colleague Maya Saptarika explains
the next steps “We will soon start using RapidPro to actually contact
individual households and remind the parents when the kids are due for their next
vaccination visit.”
“Our expectation that
after doing this, it will contribute to increasing immunization coverage,” Ms.
Saptarika says.
There are approximately
1.9 million children under one who are not fully immunized around Indonesia. RapidPro
is an important development in addressing this.
