Media News - Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Texts used to tackle South Africa HIV crisis

One million free text messages will be sent every day for 12 months from Monday in South Africa in a bid to raise HIV awareness and encourage testing for the disease. The ambitious Project Masiluleke is being rolled out across the country after a pilot period that saw calls to a AIDS national helpline shoot up by 200 percent, organizers say. The United Nations estimates that there are currently six million people living with HIV in South Africa and just one in 10 of them get the treatment they need. Project Masiluleke was set up to try to encourage people to seek testing and treatment in a country where cell phones are abundant. Africa is cited as the fastest growing mobile-phone network in the world. In South Africa, more than 80 percent of the population has one. The initiative plans to broadcast millions of health messages every month to phones across South Africa. The system sends the messages using a so-called 'Please Call Me' (PCM) service. This free form of text messaging, common across Africa, allows someone without any phone credit to send a text to a friend asking them to call. Each sent PCM message has the words 'Please Call Me,' the phone number of the caller, and space for an additional 120 characters. The extra space is normally filled with advertising, which helps offset the cost of running the service. The message reads: 'Frequently sick, tired, losing weight and scared that you might be HIV positive? Please call AIDS Helpline 0800012322.' Many of the messages are broadcast in English and in local languages such as Zulu. (CNN)

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