The University of Cape Town’s (UCT’s) Global Surgery division, in the Faculty of Health Sciences, has developed a platform for reliable and accessible information dissemination for communities without access to smart technology or data.
This was done in light of a large volume of false information being spread about Covid-19 and the urgent need to prevent the spread of the disease to less resourced communities.
There is a lot of information available electronically, but most of it can only be accessed if the user has access to data. This widely accessible electronic platform will educate communities on the disease.
The platform uses an unstructured supplementary service data code, which is accessible without data, even for users without a smartphone. It can be reached by dialling *120*1341*100#.
UCT Global Surgery head Associate Professor Salome Maswime says that, within two days of launching the platform, more than 1 000 households were reached.
“The simplicity, accuracy of the information and translations into different languages have been highly commended by users.”