Wellness & Fitness

Text messaging to improve HIV testing among girls

test

Taking a blood sample. PHOTO | ANGELA OKETCH

When the United Nations Children’s Fund released a report in December listing Kenya among six countries with the highest number of adolescents infected with HIV/Aids in the world, many were shocked.

The study showed 26 adolescents are infected every hour in the sub-Saharan Africa region yet only one in 10 is tested for HIV.

The findings echoed those of another study by the National Aids Control Council which indicated that infections among adolescents in Kenya are on the rise.

The age group 10-24 years now accounts for 29 per cent (35,352) of new infections, with girls taking the largest share.

It is the high prevalence of the disease among girls aged between 15 and 24 years -who face the highest risk of getting the disease- that inspired M-Health, a digital health platform to start a text messaging programme aimed at sensitising the group. In the first phase the responses were analysed by its researchers.

Multiple studies done around girls in the age bracket show that they do not perceive the level of threat, said Njambi Njuguna, the lead researcher under the M-Health initiative.

“People have this attitude that they cannot get HIV/Aids. Our focus on this group is because statistics show that young women are up to 20 times at risk,” said Ms Njuguna, who is also a doctor.

The platform was designed to get women to recognise the risk at a personal level. The participants received messages on pregnancy, abortion, the effects of HIV/Aids and ways of protecting themselves from the disease.

In the first phase Dr Njuguna and her team chose to engage 600 participants through mobile phones because they are readily used in Kenya.

Topics of interest

Statistics from the Communications Authority of Kenya shows that more than 30 million Kenyans have access to a mobile phone.

“If you see a message on a billboard and receive a text on the phone one tends to relate better with the one on the mobile. M-Health is about sending this information to your phone and in an interactive way that you can ask questions and get answers on topics of interest.”

Out of the 600 participants 300 were in constant communication with the M-Health platform while the rest never got any prompts. The active participants got weekly messages on various topics touching on HIV/Aids.

The women were drawn from mid-level colleges in Kiambu County, and they suggested the topics they wanted covered during the survey.

“Most of them said, pregnancy and abortion. Hardly any talked about HIV/Aids because it does not strike them as a problem, it’s always someone else’s problem. And so we came up with a frame of questions addressing issues these women face while still bringing in the aspect of HIV/Aids,” she said.

At the end of every month, the research team would do a phone-based survey asking the participants if they had done tests for the disease, the number of sexual partners they had within the period and their level of personal risk during that month.

The survey went on for six consecutive months.

Data from the survey showed that the group that got constant prompts reported 57 per cent more tests than the other team. Full findings of the 2013/2014 study are set for release in the coming month. However, preliminary data indicate a 90 per cent response rate.

“We also wanted to find out if people respond to questions on sex, behaviour, and testing. We reported a very good response rate, which means that the subjects were interested and were engaged. I believe it was a success because there was no face to face contact-we stuck to messaging them after the initial registration,” she said.

Dr Njuguna said the success was realised because messages are more private than face to face conversations on topics that most people find hard to talk about in the open.

Top killer diseases

“We found out that it was easier for the respondents to talk to an inanimate object than have a face to face conversation with a person. We are now working towards reaching more women from all over the country, controlling the disease being our main agenda,” she said.

The research team is currently working to secure funding for the second phase of the research where they hope to reach 5,000 girls and later scale up to 10,000 young women.

HIV/Aids is today ranked fourth among the top 10 killer diseases in Kenya as per latest statistics by Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS 2014). An estimated 20,000 people died from HIV/Aids in 2014. The figure dropped to 11,131 in the KDHS 2015 survey.