Phones for Health (PFH) is an initiative which aims to collect 20,000 functioning Android smartphones and distribute them to Community Health Workers (CHWs) in Ghana.
With the support of the 1mCHW campaign, the Ghana Health Services is pioneering a massive national scale-up, having trained and deployed 20,000 Community Health Workers (CHWs) and 1,000 eHealth technicians who are already in the field as of a few months ago. The Government of Ghana is financing the stipends for the CHWs from its domestic resources (from its Youth Unemployment Agency); however, they do not have enough funds for equipping each CHW with a smartphone, so we are trying to help them obtain 20,000 units. The Android smartphones can be older models and can be second-hand. We are confident that Ghana will succeed in this effort of providing healthcare to all the households, even in remote rural communities, and we are hoping that this will serve as a role model for other African countries.
Our goal: To collect 20,000 functioning smartphones and distribute them to Community Health Workers (CHWs) in Ghana. Equipping each Ghanaian CHW with a smartphone would propel Ghana to the forefront of healthcare infrastructure in West and Sub-Saharan Africa and make it a player of increasing importance in the global transformation of health systems delivery.
We need your help.
The process is simple. There are 2 options:
1) If you have a used Android smartphone (Phone specs: GPS facility, Android version 4.0 or above, 3GB storage and above, WiFi capabilities, and at least a 2 GHz processor) that you are willing to donate, simply fill out this form. It won’t take more than 2 minutes, we promise! We’ll then mail you a box to put your smartphone(s) in. All you have to do, after that, is send the box right back to us to our address, which has been conveniently placed as a label in your box. And don’t worry about your shipping charges – we’ll send you a prepaid shipping label, which will cover those costs for you.
2) If you do not own an Android smartphone or do not have one to donate, you can make a monetary contribution towards the initiative here. Contributions of $10 and above will be accepted.
In just a few minutes, you can help contribute towards improving local and district-level healthcare in Ghana, and make a tangible difference.
**For any related questions and concerns, please contact Abhinav Seetharaman (as4759@columbia.edu) or Chief Nat Nsarko (preznatty@gmail.com).**