Text messages can help the fight against AIDS in Papua New Guinea

Over the last couple of weeks I have taken a keen interest in reading up on articles of how HIV AIDS is being fought in African countries using Technology. An article that was of particular interest to me was the use of text messages to remind AIDS infected people to attend appointments at clinics. The reason why this article was interesting is that it is using a "Please call me" service similar to the one that Digicel PNG is offering.

How it works is quite simple a medical clinic sends a text message to a patient using the "Please call me" service to remind a person to contact the clinic.

To implement such a system here in Papua New Guinea would be quite simple considering that Digicel all ready offers the free "Please call me" service. It would just be a matter of clinics obtaining a Digicel mobile phone. There would also be a number of other steps that would need to be taken like obtaining a list of patients mobile numbers. A major limitation would be that since the "Please call me" service is only offered on the Digicel network it would only work on Digicel phones.