School Visits
Visiting a school near Wukro
Yesterday, I had a visit out to Wukro, to meet some the heads from the local health bureaus and visit some schools in the area. Two of the PhD students from Mekelle have projects in this area, looking at prevalence of parasites in children and how this may be reduced. We’re investigating using phones and GPS to collect the survey data, and have it automatically sent to a server (via GPRS) when the data collector comes into a mobile reception area. We’re also looking at how learning materials and/or diagnostic tools could be made available electronically (again using phones) to the Health Extension Workers.
We visited two schools, both a fairly short distance (10-15km) from the main Mekelle to Adigrat road, but both feeling quite remote. Both were primary schools with around 1000 pupils each – but neither had access to clean water and one had no electricity – although both did have mobile phone reception.
Getting connected to GPRS ought to be relatively straightforward, however the SIM card needs to be GPRS enabled first. It’s free to enable, but isn’t automatic. We went to the ETC office in Mekelle to ask them to do this, but for some reason currently it can’t be enabled for Tigray mobile numbers (0914xxxxxx), I then asked them to enable my Addis mobile number (0910xxxxxx), but was then told it can only be enabled in Addis. So we’re a little stuck, being unable to test the GPRS availability on any of the phones that we have between us. The good news is that SIM cards are now much cheaper – 85 birr each (with 15 birr credit included), compared to the 360+ birr I paid less than a couple of years ago.
The past month has flown by, feels as if I’ve only be back for 5 minutes. I’m generally very happy with the progress we’ve made on the project over the past year. Looking forward to coming back again in September again to see how everything has moved on again.
