Tech News Nigeria: Google’s EmOC Launches to Enhance Access to Emergency Maternal Care in Nigeria
- Google has launched a tool to estimate the travel time to the nearest emergency obstetric care facilities in Nigeria, aimed at addressing gaps in accessing health services in regions where facilities are limited.
- The tool uses Google’s internal directions API to estimate the travel time to the nearest, second nearest, and third nearest EmOC facilities across specific regions in the country, covering Nigeria’s 15 largest cities.
- Timely access to emergency obstetric care can reduce maternal deaths and intrapartum stillbirths by as much as 50% and 75%, respectively, and decision-makers can use the information gathered on the tool to expand ambulatory services, improve roads, add new facilities, or upgrade existing ones, and more.
Google has launched a new tool that utilizes its internal directions Application Programming Interface (API) to estimate the travel time to the nearest, second nearest, and third nearest emergency obstetric care (EmOC) facilities across specific regions in Nigeria. This tool is aimed at assisting decision-makers, governments, and public health organizations in addressing gaps in accessing health services where facilities are limited. The OnTIME Consortium, which contributes verified emergency obstetric care facilities, has made the tool available to decision-makers in Nigeria’s 15 largest cities: Aba, Abuja, Benin City, Ibadan, Ilorin, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Maiduguri, Onitsha, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Uyo, and Warri.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every day, with more than 70% of these deaths occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. Recent WHO estimates show that Nigeria contributes the most to global maternal health deaths. Evidence shows that long travel times from home to a health facility significantly impact pregnancy outcomes for mothers and newborns, and timely access to EmOC can reduce maternal deaths and intrapartum stillbirths by as much as 50% and 75%, respectively. However, current approaches to estimating the time it takes expectant mothers to reach EmOC are limited.
By using the tool to gather information, decision-makers can expand ambulatory services, make road improvements, add new facilities or upgrade existing ones, and more. The digital dashboard will be a critical tool in the arsenal of service planners and policymakers looking to optimize geographical accessibility to critical maternal health services. OnTIME Principal Investigator Dr. Aduragbemi Banke-Thomas, a physician, public health practitioner, and Associate Professor of Maternal and Newborn Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the tool would be essential for policymakers to understand the contributions of travel time to poor maternal and perinatal outcomes.
Olumide Balogun, Google Nigeria’s Interim Lead, expressed excitement about the collaboration with the OnTIME Consortium and the opportunity to make the tool available to decision-makers in Nigeria. Balogun hopes that governments and public health organizations will use this tool to better support the health of their communities, by helping mothers and infants access care more quickly. He also revealed that Google is looking forward to learning from the rollout in Nigeria and expanding to other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in the coming months.