Daily text messages to health workers improve proper malaria treatment administration, study shows

"Sending daily text message reminders to health workers can mean nearly 25 percent more children are properly treated for malaria, according to the results of a six-month trial conducted in Kenya" published Thursday in the Lancet, Reuters reports (Kelland, 8/3).

"At the beginning of the study, 20.5 percent of children were correctly managed, [and] this increased to 49.6 percent after the six-month study. The effect appeared to persist after the texts stopped. Six months after the trial ended, 51.4 percent of children were receiving the correct treatment," BBC News writes (8/3). According to a press release from the Wellcome Trust, which funded the study, "the cost of a text message in Kenya is about US$0.01, resulting in the cost of full exposure to the intervention of $2.6 per health worker, or $39,000 if scaled up to an estimated 15,000 health workers in all rural facilities nationwide" (8/4).