This weekend, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa’s MamaCare Antenatal & Postnatal Education Program’s Whatsapp Maternity Support had the honour to be featured in British Vogue Magazine’s Forces For Change October Edition about their work reaching every last mile to care and counsel mums, babies, and their families. I am so proud of their embracing the promise of technology to democratize access to accurate information from conception and the cradle, to age.

MamaCare’s WhatsApp world is far from your typical online talkfest. It’s a safe space for pregnant women and new mums in Nigeria to connect, commiserate, congratulate, and voice their honest concerns — including the stuff deemed uncomfortable or taboo — knowing they can count on getting a prompt, accurate response in return. Our midwives, sometimes referred to endearingly as “Mama” by their group members, field questions about everything from breast feeding and nutrition to pregnancy sex and postpartum spotting.

By harnessing the power of digital communication I believe that MamaCare will amplify its impact. What’s currently reaching 8,000 mothers a month, can soon evolve into well over 200,000. And with about seven million babies born in Nigeria each year and our goal of providing every single one of them and their families with a safe delivery and quality care, the new WBFA chatbot will be a major step in fast-tracking that ambition.

Our tech is going to underpin our frontline. We want to be able to deliver lessons, immunisation reminders, nutrition advice, all by WhatsApp. If something as obtainable as WhatsApp has the capacity to improve medical outcomes for Nigeria’s most disadvantaged women through the diffusion of reliable information, then the world might not be as far from widespread healthcare reform as we once thought.

As the developers of a wide range of home and health facilities based health records, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa believes that the role of data collation and analysis is crucial to the evolution of egalitarian healthcare systems. When we’re at a crossroads and we’re not sure what to do, data, if it’s openly and freely available, can lead us forward, hovwever we can’t access data if we’re not accessing the promise and realities of technology. I’m hoping that the WBFA’s use of technology will add this extra layer to all of our programming, and democratise it.

Read more about my Forces For Change interview: WhatsApp Is The Key To Democratising Global Healthcare>>