Access to Health Using Cell Phones by War Refugees

Abstract

The world is experiencing the largest ever humanitarian crisis since World War II, with the largest number of the world’s refugees being hosted in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR). Many of these refugees are females of reproductive age. Refugees require special healthcare services that host countries are not always able to provide. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies may serve as an added value to reduce the gap in this population. mHealth is the support of medical and public health practice by mobile devices including mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants, or other wireless devices. These technologies can facilitate access to unavailable services. In low-and middle-income countries, mHealth interventions have improved treatment adherence and appointment compliance. Despite promising results and the presence of cell phone networks such as second, third, and fourth generation (2G, 3G, or 4G) and global positioning system (GPS), mHealth technologies are still not being implemented. This chapter provides a holistic picture of refugee settlement in EMR by identifying the distribution of refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people and mapping the published evidence on the use of mHealth interventions by refugees for improving maternal and child health in EMR. The use of combined methods provides more insight on the well-being of refugees in the EMR. A literature review to map the distribution of refugees per country within the EMR and scoping review methods for identifying published evidence on mHealth interventions on maternal and child health used among refugee populations in EMR were applied. The findings reveal the presence of only three interventions on maternal and child health in EMR. Only one study demonstrated that short message system (SMS) was an effective reminder system to improve compliance with immunization appointments and a source of motivation to show up on their appointments. This chapter highlights the potential of SMS-based mHealth technologies and the general lack of evidence on effective mHealth technologies in EMR. It serves as the first step in this process of expanding mHealth to EMR and identifying priorities for further study.