Mobile phone in Bihar: a "smart" solution to reduce maternal mortality? - Al Dahdah, Marine; Kumar, Aalok
This communication offers a glance at this new field of mHealth, the use of mobile phones for health programs, through the study of a particular maternal mHealth project deployed in Bihar,India.We’ll base our communication on a fieldwork conducted last autumn in two districts and 5 blocks of Bihar, among almost 100 women, 30 community healthworkers and 20 implementers, all involved in a maternal mobile health project. We propose to focus more specifically our talk on inequalities that those socio-technical devices are revealing and even enhancing on the ground : gender inequalities,socio economical inequalities, health inequalities. Whereas mobile health is presented by its implementers as a neutral, universal, accessible and “smart” technology to improve health in Bihar, we’ll analyse how it in fact reinforces inequalities on the ground.
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Keywords: conferencePaper; Bihar; mHealth; mobile phones