Using mobile phone text messaging for malaria surveillance in rural Kenya.

Background: Effective surveillance systems are required to track malaria testing and treatment practices. A 26-week study "SMS for Life" was piloted in five rural districts of Kenya to examine whether SMS reported surveillance data could ensure real-time visibility of accurate data and their use by district managers to impact on malaria case-management.

Methods: Health workers from 87 public health facilities used their personal mobile phones to send a weekly structured SMS text message reporting the counts of four basic surveillance data elements to a web-based system accessed by district managers.

Reducing stock-outs of life saving malaria commodities using mobile phone text-messaging: SMS for life study in Kenya.

Background: Health facility stock-outs of life saving malaria medicines are common across Africa. Innovative ways of addressing this problem are urgently required. We evaluated whether SMS based reporting of stocks of artemether-lumefantrine (AL) and rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) can result in reduction of stock-outs at peripheral facilities in Kenya.