New app helps women keep track of their pregnancy in Nigeria

Pregnant women in Nigeria are enjoying a new mobile application that helps monitor their pregnancy and look out for any sign of complications that could affect them or their baby’s health.

The app was created in just two weeks by a Nigerian developer based America who wants to help reduce infant and maternal mortality in Africa.

Ernest Nwokolo is a part of the team that created the healthcare app.

“Once you download it on your phone, on your tablet because it’s an android it comes and leaves an icon of the mother and the baby. So you can click on that and if probably ultrasound or anything it tells you that — or if you are expecting a boy you can turn to the boy and it turns into blue,” he said.

Cradle count was launched in November 2015 and is fast gaining popularity. It was placed on the Google play store in December 2015 and has seen over a thousand downloads so far.

According to UNICEF, a woman’s chance of dying from pregnancy and childbirth in Nigeria is 1 in 13.

Although many of these deaths are preventable, the coverage and quality of health care services in Nigeria continues to fail women and children.

Less than 20 percent of health facilities offer emergency obstetric care and only 35 percent of deliveries are handled by skilled birth attendants.

Many women in rural Nigeria still rely on traditional birth attendants during pregnancy but birth houses often lack proper hygiene and complications can occur during child birth endangering the mother and baby.

“Pregnancy is a period where a lot of people are not too sure of what will happen, what to do, how to do things and all that. So there has been a packaging of very everyday like tips that the pregnant woman can use, from the way she lies down to the way she eats and what she eats and how she exercise herself, the things that she does, things that she should steer clear from, these are the things that are all packaged in that App to enable her to travel that road, that journey to the cradle in a safe manner,” said Nwokolo.

India and Nigeria account for more than a third of the total number of deaths globally. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most dangerous place to have a baby according to the World Health Organization (WHO).