Gratis vejledning over mobilen, betalt af udenlandsk bistand, skulle gøre det lettere at beskytte sig og leve mere sikkert, men der var store fejl i programmet, som endte i den modsatte grøft: Mere usikker sex.
KAMPALA, 17 June 2013 (IRIN): A mobile phone-based health programme designed to improve access to sexual health information and boost safe sex in rural central Uganda had the opposite effect, according to the findings of a Yale University study published in May.
The programme, designed by Google and the Grameen Foundation’s AppLab and provided free of charge by mobile phone firm MTN, allowed users in 60 central Ugandan villages to text questions on sexual and reproductive health to a server and receive pre-prepared responses from a database.
“Quantitative survey results allow us to reject the hypothesis that improving access to information would increase knowledge and shift behaviour to less risky sexual activities. In fact, we find that the service led to an increase in promiscuity (flere erotiske forbindelser) and no shift in perception of norms,” says the study.
It is a partnership between Yale University, NGO Innovations for Poverty Action, Google, the Grameen Foundation and the Uganda National Council of Science and Technology.
“We find no increase in health knowledge regarding HIV transmission or contraception methods (svangerskabsforebyggelse) and no change in attitudes. Rather than seeing reductions in risky sexual behaviour, we actually find higher incidence of risky sexual behaviour and more infidelity (utroskab), although more abstinence (afholdenhed) as well.”
The assumption was that access to HIV knowledge changes attitudes towards safer sexual practices, but the study found that the platform instead increased infidelity from 12 to 27 percent among participants.
Possible reasons for the unexpected results include the fact that participants did not use the service in a sustained manner after the initial marketing period; many complained that the quality of the search algorithm in the local Luganda language was unsatisfactory; and the service sometimes returned inappropriate answers.
In addition, respondents said they had no funds to get tested and seek treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, which hampered (nedsatte) their ability to act on advice the service provided.
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/98237/ugandan-mhealth-initiative-increases-promiscuity
