Foundations launch mHealth partnership

The UN, Rockefeller and Vodafone Foundations launched a new partnership in February to help maximize the impact of mobile health (that is, the impact of mobile technology on health), especially in the developing world. The Mobile Health (mHealth) Alliance will encourage the development of scalable, sustainable, and open-standard health solutions that can be made widely available while supporting projects and research focused on increasing opportunities for mobile health.

For more information
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml;jsessionid=TPEUCK30GR1JLLAQBQ4CGW15AAAACI2F?id=244000012

‘Financial tsunami’ could mean extra 90 million people in poverty by end of 2010

The world's progress towards the Millennium Development Goals could be pushed back by at least three years by what he termed the ‘financial tsunami’ sweeping across the world, the UK’s international development secretary warned last month. Speaking at a conference in London, Douglas Alexander unveiled research from the Department for International Development predicting that another 90 million people will be pushed into poverty by the end of next year.

Gates grants to support Grameen Foundation in Ghana and Uganda

Grameen Foundation has received two grants worth over $4.7 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support technology initiatives aimed at improving healthcare delivery in Ghana and providing information to poor farmers in Uganda. The former will support the development of mobile applications to enable healthcare workers to enhance the quality of healthcare delivery and increase the range of services available. Among other things, the grant will allow nurses to collect and transmit data more efficiently by mobile phone, which in turn will allow them to spend more time providing primary care services to patients, as well as giving the country’s health service more up-to-date and accurate information.