WHISPA

12, April 2022 - 08:00 | COVID-19 Health Innovations

WHISPA is a mobile app that provides young people with private, even anonymous, access to a variety of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) information, products and services. This solution aims to address the problems of societal and health provider judgment and bias that discourages young people from accessing sexual and reproductive health information and care seeking. All these problems are made worse through myths, misconceptions and abstinence-only advice from people in their society. Another problem addressed by WHISPA is the issue of low contraceptive use among young people which is compounded by poor quality contraceptive counselling and biased prescribing from healthcare providers. This can result in a young person receiving poor quality of care and poor customer experience while attempting to seek contraceptives or any sexual health services.

ERQ MA’ED Media and Mental Health

23, March 2022 - 08:10 | COVID-19 Health Innovations

Erq Ma’ed works to bring a mentally stable society, psychologically healed generation and consciously decision-making community by using social media to drive social change with an aggregate of more than 5 Million Facebook and YouTube engagements. Erk Mead Media and Communication is a pioneering centre in Ethiopia that offers social awareness, psychological therapy, psychosocial training for youth, couples and marriage counselling and support for children and families. The programme includes support offered through a bi-weekly radio show on mental health, depression, forgiveness therapy, reconciliation, trauma and child and women psychosocial health Mental and psycho-social health.

Erq Ma’ed receives over 20,000 calls for assistance each year from across the country. Most calls are for issues related to domestic and sexual violence, marriage crises, trauma, depression, low self-esteem, inappropriate parenting/child abuse, economic problems and compounded stress. The organization provides support free of charge to over 2000 people/year and subsidizes the cost of this service by hosting a weekly radio program which has millions of listeners and sponsors who buy airtime for commercial advertisement services.

TrueSpec

22, March 2022 - 08:00 | COVID-19 Health Innovations

TrueSpec is a portable device and application that uses artificial intelligence called RAI (Real Active Ingredient) to allow hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical laboratories and quality control centres to verify if certain drugs are genuine or falsified. This process takes less than 20 seconds and can be conducted anytime and anywhere. This solution allows the user to save money, as well as build a database to help estimate the true impact of substandard or falsified medical products and to collect, structure and systematically analyze accurate, reliable and quality data for Africa. The application was developed by TrueSpec Africa.