Mobile phones are being tried and tested in myriad ways in health care. They are used for data collection and disease surveillance, for ensuring treatment compliance, for managing health information systems and point-of-care support, for health promotion and disease prevention, and for delivering emergency medical services. Clearly, m-health, as this growing field is dubbed, is here to stay.
At the same time, achieving scale and sustainability in most m-health projects has been a challenge. One of the key aspects of beginning to think about ways to integrate m-health into health systems in a sustainable way is to establish financial systems to pay for health services and to ensure financial accountability within programs.
Airtime For Selling More Condoms: Social Marketing Tricks and Tips from Tanzania data sheet 5754 Views
In Tanzania, a non-profit organization is using airtime as an incentive for increased condom sales. “Ongeo Zaidi na Salama,” or “Talk More with Salama,” offers mobile airtime incentives to shopkeepers who stock and sell condoms (Salama, which means 'safe', is the largely PSI-distributed Tanzanian condom brand), bringing greater visibility to safe sex practices.
The program, run by Population Services International, an organization widely known for pioneering condom social marketing since the 1970s and 1980s, was developed in reaction to the lack of condoms in Tanzanian stores.
85 million condoms at 100,000 retail outlets were sold in 2009, with the vast majority distributed by PSI. Because the PSI-distributed condoms are subsidized, they are considered lower-value by the shopkeepers than other products as they have low profit margins. Retailers were also reliant on the PSI agents to push and deliver the product and were not incentivised to proactively requests re-supplies when their condom stocks ran low. As a result, promotion and requisition (and sales) of these Salama condoms is not a priority for shopkeepers.
