Nokia Data Gathering,

Nokia Data Gathering

Leap-frogging south across the American continent, Frances heads for central Brazil. A government-led initiative in the state of Amazonas is using mobile phones to help conduct an important health project. Though the trip is less adventure-filled than Frances half imagines or hopes, she discovers that real dangers still face the region’s inhabitants on a daily basis.

Some places have a certain ring about them. The Amazon. Just the name conjures up a vast expanses of water and jungle teeming with piranhas, boa constrictors and alligators. Many the European explorer, such as Percy H. Fawcett and Raymond Maufrais, who sent letters home recounting terrifying stories of voracious alligators, anacondas and spiders, only to fuel the region’s reputation further by disappearing into the jungle never to be seen again. I had visions of beating off the attacks with both paddles of the canoe…

So I confess it was a tiny bit of a disappointment to fly into Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas region, home to nearly two million people, and an opera house, and discover in the city harbour a dozen double-decker pleasure boats jostling for custom. All around us, camera-totting tourists were filing on board to start their trip up the famous river, the longest on Earth.

Like a good Brit, I joined the queue. Within just minutes, however, we were floating on what seemed like a muddy ocean; within hours, drifting through some of the remotest rainforest on Earth. On the banks, tiny boys plunged from trees into the water, men sat on the shaded verandas of their floating homes gutting fish, and women carried flowers to the brightly-coloured huts of the rainforest churches. From the canopy, monkeys tutted and barked at us.

Though the dangers appeared less immediate than I had imagined, they lurked there nonetheless: malaria is rife in this region, as is another potentially fatal disease - one that’s infamous for the sometimes brutal symptoms: dengue fever.

According to the health workers I had met, Luzia and Tania, thousands of cases of dengue have been registered in the region every year. With no vaccine, no cure, and sometimes no relief available, the disease can pose a very serious threat to the peoples of the Amazon. Mosquito-borne, the only way to combat the disease is through an organised programme of pest control.

Having visited the Health Department and seen the research and organisation behind it, I was keen to see the programme in action - in the field.

After three, nearly four hours on the river, we finally pulled into a tiny village on the banks of the great river. The programme had evidently met with some success: to my alarm but also amusement, we had considerable trouble locating anyone in the village who had ever suffered from the disease!

Fortunately, locals Maria and Tania eventually stepped forward as former ‘victims’, and Tania gave stories that would have filled the letters home of many a sensation-seeking European explorer in the past, as she recounted the somewhat gory and ghastly tribulations that she and her daughter had faced in the clutches of the disease.

Meanwhile, epidemiologist Rosemary recounted to me the result of the programme: thanks to Data Gathering, cases of dengue fever have been cut by a staggering 93% in the region. More than merely helping health workers do their job, Mobile Data Gathering was actually helping to reduce disease. Here in Brazil, mobile phones were not just benefiting peoples’ lives, they were helping to save them.

  Become a friend

 Download project video: .wmv .mp4

Back to the map of the world