Wireless Technology Brings AIDS Relief to Africa

Communication engineers are using their skills to fight the war on AIDS in Africa. The method used for taking on this task is recycling standard printers and incorporating them with cell phone technology. Although the solution may seem simple, the quickened transfer of AIDS data is critical to saving the lives of Mozambique’s growing AIDS population.

The proposal came at the request of the Clinton Foundation whose growing concerns over the slow transfer of AIDS test results is resulting in the deaths of many of Mozambique infants. Labs in Mozambique are notably understaffed so relying on technicians to relay AIDS results to doctors the old-fashioned-way, was just impractical. This inspired what Philip Clayton of Telit considers a solution based from fairly simple technology: a gutted-out printer implanted with cell-phone technology. Suddenly, tens of thousands of test results are able to be transmitted simultaneously using GPRS. TelitWireless is a company that is almost exclusively associated with their wireless products and services. Now, with the collective efforts of Britain’s Sequoia Technology Group, they are fighting the war on AIDS in Mozambique.

Sub-Saharan Africa has a population of AIDS-infected people that outmatches any other region in the world. In fact, 2/3rds of the global population infected by AIDS can be located here. In 2010, 1,400,000 people in Mozambique were counted as infected with the AIDS viruses—leaving 670,000 children orphaned with 130,000 of them infected with the virus themselves. Thetechnology used by communication’s engineers to save lives may be what one doctor working in the Mozambique AIDS labs warns as “no magic bullet,” but perhaps with this step will come more promising AIDS statistics for Africa in 2012.