During her first three pregnancies she would either forget her appointments or she just wouldn’t bother to go to the health centre. Fatou Tine, a 25-year-old mother of four from Khombole village east of the Senegalese capital Dakar, had the habit of missing her appointments with health specialists.

She had no access to basic health information until two years ago. She also didn’t have a cell phone. The explosion of mobile technology across the world didn’t make her life any different.

But when Fatou was pregnant of her fourth child, she never missed an appointment thanks to a mobile text message service introduced to her village by Plan International and a consortium of six other organisations to promote safe motherhood.

The project started in Khombole 2009 in response to women’s habitual failure to visit the health centre for checkups and counseling. According to Deguene Fall of Plan International, 150 women were given free cell phones initially as an experiment.

Messages send to illiterates
Through the project, women receive regular text messages sent from a central server in Dakar about their antenatal, delivery, postnatal and newborn care. They are monitored during the pregnancy, and those at high risk are brought in for check-ups.

Showing her basic Nokia cell phone, Fatou says “Over the past few months, I’ve received at least four text messages about my appointments with doctors and the vaccination of my children. I have personally seen its effect because my last pregnancy was much easier than the three previous ones thanks to the messages I received on my phone.”

Fatou, like most of the women in Khombole, is illiterates and their children, husbands and neighbours read the text messages for her.

Reminder of responsibilities
According to Fall the text message service has seen a rise of women’s health centre attendance rate. “Most women seemed reluctant to go for checkups. But because they now receive regular messages that remind them of their responsibilities, they visit the health centre regularly.”

The text message initiative has also enabled community health workers to track a woman's progress from pregnancy to birth.

In rural Senegal, like in many other African countries, pregnant women on the countryside live miles away from health facilities. Because of a lack of transport and knowledge of their delivery date, most of them deliver their babies at home with the help of untrained traditional birth attendants.

More messages in Senegal
Studies have shown that many pregnant women die from bleeding, infections and other circumstances which can be easily prevented in health centres.

But in Khombole this is no longer the case as pregnant women now keep track of the progress of their pregnancy, thanks to the regular text message they receive.

With the success of the project, Plan International and their partners are planning to extend the initiative to other villages across Senegal.