Switchboard Uses Mobile Phones To Improve Healthcare In Africa

In the US you can see four different specialists when your plugs need work. Why not? But in Liberia, where 181 doctors treat four million people, the doctor you’re seeing is the only game in town. Several towns, actually.

The featured group on Philanthroper today is Switchboard, a nonprofit started earlier this year to adress the issue of isolated healthcare by facilitating medical collaboration. Switchboard provides free texting and calling between all of the doctors in a nation through a closed network called MDNet, allowing them to consult on the fly. Now that just makes good sense.

Switchboard operates in two countries right now, Liberia and Ghana, and they have already connected more than three million free calls. They are working toward opening a network in Tanzania, a country with 1300 doctors, 13,000 nurses and 44 million people. [Switchboard via Philanthroper]