Social & Mobile Media for Nursing Education in Disadvantaged Areas

On a global level more than one billion people who live in low resource settings do not receive adequate healthcare. In these contexts, caregivers and healthcare professionals often work in isolation and have poor access to post-basic education, to continuing education and to up-to-date evidence-based information. This is particularly true for South Africa, a nation which is dramatically affected by the spread of HIV/Aids: 63’000 children get infected yearly, child-mortality and maternal mortality have risen, and life expectancy has fallen from 62 to 52 years in the last fifteen years. The lack of adequate healthcare leads to severe societal and economic problems.

This research intends to gain new insights and provide guidance on how social & mobile media can facilitate information access and education of healthcare workers in low resource settings. The project aims at exploring and improving the access to information and education of nurses and midwifes, who work in disadvantaged communities in South Africa. The three Millennium Development Goals centred on “child-health”, “maternal health” as well as “HIV” stand in the focus of this project. It is planned to research how the potential of 26 million mobile phone users and of the increasing number of social network accounts in SA can contribute to achieving these goals and improving the situation.