PharmAccess and Selcom partner to empower women to access maternal care via MomCare wallets
Digitized maternity care and financial system, facilitated by Selcom, is revolutionizing mother and infant care in rural Tanzania.
MomCare electronic card tapped on Selcom Huduma POS
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: PharmAccess International through Selcom’s financial and payment solutions services has developed a digital solution that helps to track the journey of expectant mothers and a digital ‘closed’ wallet, which enable pregnant mothers to access quality antenatal care, delivery at a health facility and postnatal healthcare services.
Dubbed MomCare project, the enrolled women are provided with prepaid financial bundle via an electronic card, that enable them to pay for all her maternal and delivery care at all contracted facilities in the area. The card with QR code also stands as their unique identifier, whereby it must be presented during each appointed visit along the pregnancy journey.
MomCare card payments are exchanged with data, which are analysed and used by facility and district management for planning and procurement of necessary supplies for maternal care. The project facilitated by Selcom as a digital quality-based financing system has progressively helped facilities improve the quality of health services and offer better maternal outcomes by encouraging more women to access maternal healthcare.
On how it works, PharmAccess Tanzania’s Country Director, Dr Heri Marwa explains that when pregnant mothers visit the facilities, which MomCare project is implemented, the nurses or midwives perform all the procedure to see if the mother is qualified for the program, she then puts the QR CODE on mothers’ clinical card as her unique identifier. All the midwives/nurses were provided with a tablet where they scan the mother's QR CODE and enters all the services she performs. During this first clinic visit, the mother is provided with MomCare Card which has virtual money to pay her bills whenever she visits the ANC clinic.
“The target is to reach 15,000 mothers by end of 2021. The project started in 2018 and so far, we have managed to reach 11,000 mothers. ”
Mother tapping her MomCare card on the Selcom machine to pay her bills in one of the MomCare facilities.
“Digitisation of services and payments is critical because it can ultimately have an impact on every other priority that organisations may have, from health to education, and it also benefits NGOs to reach their project’s maximum potential.”
The initiative is currently being implemented in the Manyara region targeting about 15,000 women in three districts: Babati districts, Mbulu district and Hanang district in 2021. The project is being implemented in collaboration with the Manyara Region Health Management Team (RHMT), Council Health Management Teams (CHMT) and forty (40) public and private (40) health facilities, most of them being dispensaries and health centers.
Together expectant mothers and healthcare providers follow a standardized pregnancy program on one digital platform, at predetermined cost and quality.
About Selcom:
Selcom is the largest cross-segment financial and payment services provider operating in Tanzania, providing its customers in Tanzania and across Sub-Saharan Africa, with a full range of electronic payment products and services focusing on digital, card and cardless processing services.
Selcom’s digital solutions also support the work of various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by leveraging digital solutions so as to meet the needs of underserved communities within the country.
About PharmAccess:
PharmAccess Foundation is a non-governmental organization that focuses on the root causes that hamper health care financing and investments towards equitable and quality health care in sub-Saharan Africa. Working as an innovator and catalyst for pragmatic solutions that can be adopted, adapted, and scaled by partners.
Through public-private partnerships, PharmAccess focuses on; promoting basic health insurance plans and other innovative demand-side financing options to protect people from financial hardship; introducing quality standards and improvement methodologies for health care providers to increase transparency and stimulate efficiencies; facilitating and stimulating loans, business support, and investments for private health care providers, and innovating value-based health care solutions and financing, using data to empower health care consumers, patients, doctors and financiers alike.