Digitising Cholera Brochures using U-Report chatbots
Cholera awareness
As part of UNICEF's ongoing cholera response, U-Report Malawi developed a cholera chatbot to ease access to information on cholera. A chatbot is a computer programme that mimics human interaction. It understands questions and provides appropriate answers. In our case, this computer is U-Report Malawi, a free social messaging platform that gathers opinions from young people on many topics and disseminates alerts and warnings. U-Report Malawi is on both Airtel and TNM mobile lines and can be accessed by sending the word Join to the number 1177.
U-Report Malawi digitised existing Ministry of Health brochures on Cholera. These can be retrieved by sending the word Cholera/Kolera to 1177 on Airtel or TNM. The keyword Cholera triggers a message with options on what you may be interested in. It offers topics on what Cholera is, how it spreads, its sign and symptoms, how to prevent it and vaccines.
So far more than 32,100 people have triggered the chatbot. The majority of these, 46 per cent have triggered the Bot to read the information on Cholera Vaccines. The chatbot was first created in September 2022 and upgraded in December to include the U-Report what’s app channel. The what’s app channel can be accessed by adding the number +265 885 43 47 77 to your what’s app contacts and triggering it accordingly.
