€5m boost to UCC East Africa health project

Almost €5 million has been awarded to a University College Cork (UCC) project aimed at developing a digital health system for maternal and child health in East Africa.

The new project, led by the INFANT Research Centre at UCC, is an 11-partner consortium between institutions from Ireland, UK, Norway, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The funding will be used to help protect mothers and children in East Africa by using smart digital tools to fight infectious diseases and save lives.

Entitled LINDA-FAMILIA, meaning ‘Protect the Family’ in Swahili,the initiative has been funded under the Horizon Europe Programme aimed at revolutionising maternal and child health in East Africa.

The initiative will deploy scalable, interoperable digital health systems to track infectious diseases and support health services in pregnancy, postpartum, and childhood care.

It will replace paper-based records in four priority regions, including Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Eastern Province, Rwanda; the Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania, and the Lango Sub-region, Uganda.

Professor Blandina Mmbaga, the project scientific coordinator and director at the Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute, said that she has seen firsthand the “urgent need for stronger health data systems across East Africa”.

“By replacing fragmented, paper-based records with a scalable and integrated digital system, we can dramatically improve how care is delivered and ultimately, save lives,” said Ms Mmbaga.

Using the free and open source DHIS2 platform, the world’s largest health information system, the project will integrate 11 World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended Digital Health Interventions (DHIs) to create country specific eRegistries.

These systems will capture individual level health data on infectious diseases and vaccinations, enabling improved clinical care, disease surveillance, and public health research, at lower cost than existing systems.

In 2020, 70% of global maternal deaths occurred in Sub Saharan Africa, with this project aiming to tackle those high maternal and child mortality rates by improving early detection.

Professor Ali Khashan, LINDA-FAMILIA project lead said that this project addresses “a fundamental gap in health systems: access to reliable, timely data”.

“By combining global scientific expertise with deep local knowledge, we’re building sustainable digital tools that not only improve health data systems but also support clinical decision-making in maternal and child health,” said Mr Khashan.