#BellaNaijaMCM Tosan Mogbeyiteren is Reducing Infant Mortality in Nigeria with WeMUNIZE

There are 10 million children in the world today who haven’t been immunised; about 3 million of that number are in Nigeria. #BellaNaijaMCM this week Tosan Mogbeyiteren is working to change that.

In Nigeria’s underserved communities, families face multiple but surmountable barriers to accessing immunisation services; poor immunisation system, absence of timely, clear communication and information, parental attitudes/beliefs/knowledge e.t.c.

Tosan, a public health specialist, is the founder of Black Swan Tech Ltd, whose initiative WeMUNIZE is helping solve this major health challenge Nigeria is facing – low child immunisation rate – as only 1 in 10 children complete their immunisation appointments in some parts of the country.

WeMUNIZE tackles this by deploying automated scheduling, GPS-enabled Software-as-a-service that uses a combination of digital record keeping and community engagement to increase birth registration and early childhood immunisation.

The platform uses robocalls based on voice recordings made by respected, influential personalities of the community&SMS in local languages to remind& persuade primary care givers and their relatives to take children <1 year of age for Routine Immunisation.

Enrollment volunteers use a mobile device to collect and verify children’s details, including the date of birth, immunisation history, phone numbers of the primary caregiver and those of two other family members. The primary caregiver receives a picture album that is tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID), which will hold and protect the pictures of the child taken after each immunisation session.

Caregivers/Child benefit by getting keepsake of the child’s photographs through childhood.

Tosan has also created Persona, A career counselling software named “Persona” that helps students make important decisions on what courses to apply for in universities.

Tosan was one of the Top 10 finalists for Jack Ma‘s inaugural Africa Netpreneur Prize. Black Swan is currently working with USAID Nigeria to expand WeMUNIZE coverage in northern Nigeria.

We celebrate Tosan for actually going out of his way to ensure children in underserved communities in Nigeria get life-saving immunisation.