Foundation Projects

Hepatitis is serious health problem not only in Pakistan but worldwide. It is prevalent in five different forms namely hepatitis A, B, C, D, E and is communicable. Pakistan is a developing nation of more than 180 million people, and many regions of the country have alarmingly high rates of uncontrolled outbreaks of hepatitis.

Regardless of these alarming statistics, little effort in form of awareness seminars mostly are being conducted in urban areas only.

Around 75% of the Pakistani population resides in the rural areas where there is lack of access to clean water and proper sanitation conduction due to which Hepatitis (A & E) spread rapidly. To date, out of 200,000 patients treated at UM-Healthcare Trust in Mardan, 20% are carriers of hepatitis and are completely unaware of their critical situation. These statistics motivated the development of a solution based on cell phones that will track and monitor its spread in rural communities. This model has been successfully implemented at UM Trust and shall be replicated for other diseases with our partners NRDP and CDRS, Pakistan. Additionally, this solution shall be provided to the health ministry for further research.

We aim to build “Real-time Hepatitis reporting and surveillance system via ICT and mobile based Technology”. This model will not only serve as a solution to track the disease but to track the origin of the disease itself (the source), so that necessary measures are taken to prevent it from further spreading. The model shall be easily replicated for other communicable diseases in future.

The specific objectives of the ISIF Asia grant project were as follows:

1. Devise and implement a replicable hepatitis surveillance system using ICT and mobile technology. This
   system will be first-ever geographic map of hepatitis transmission in the country and an accurate picture of the way the disease is spreading.
2. Develop an innovative solution for tracking and tracing Hepatitis back to its source. Collection of this data will take place by using cell phones. Mapping of the collected data on Google maps in real time to see its spread from village to village. This will provide a visual representation of data to different stakeholders.
3. Bringing awareness to general public on the preventive methods of the spread of virus.
4. Share the data with Ministry of Health, Policy makers and relevant stakeholders to develop and
   implement strategies, where the impact of disease has the potential to be momentous.
5. Foster collaboration with national and international stakeholder to strengthen hepatitis prevention,
   control and mitigation on the large-scale health and economic impact following the disease.