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Introduction
Mobile technology is redesigning the way the world functions and thinks. It is now being used in healthcare, and is becoming a huge contributor in delivering healthcare information to impoverished people in developing countries. Mobile phones are cheap, portable, easy to use, and are becoming easily available, even in remote parts of the world. Mobile Health, or mHealth, is the use of mobile phones to improve the quality of care and improve efficiency of health services. The Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe) (2011) defined m-Health as "medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices" (p.6). Specifically, m-Health can have a profoundly positive impact on the country of Tanzania in East Africa, which has a high prevalence of diseases that are both chronic and communicable. With improved health, Tanzania can focus on developing economically, and its workers can be more productive in the labor force, and Tanzania can focus on developing economically.
Tanzania Today
Tanzania can greatly benefit from increased usage of m-health. People in Tanzania, who are in desperate need of healthcare face major obstacles such as poverty, lack of infrastructure, and government corruption. These people cannot pay for healthcare and are unable to travel to locations where adequate healthcare is available. Illness and disease severely affect people's occupations and economic productivity. As a result from the lack of healthcare, diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria spread quickly and easily.
Tanzania has a high prevalence of both HTV/AIDS and malaria. It was estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) (2008) that 1.5 million children and adults in Tanzania were living with symptoms of AIDS (p.4). According to the WHO, there were 110,000 deaths due to HIV/AIDS in 2007 (p.5). There are 1.1 million orphaned children because their parents died from the disease (p.6). The WHO study estimated that 530,000 people were in need of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Tanzania (p.l 1).
In terms of malaria, a large majority of the population is at risk of incurring a malaria infection. According to the Roll Back Malaria Initiative from the WHO (2012), 40 million people of Tanzania's estimated 43.2 million people live in areas where malaria is transmitted (p.12). The...