Tanyaradzwa

Tanyaradzwa is a mobile based health clinic that will help expecting mothers throughout their pregnancy.The app provides medical knowledge to health care providers, expecting mothers and their support systems by linking pregnant women to hospitals and connecting pregnant women with midwives if a hospital is out of reach.

Thelmar Manyika a 25 year old Process Engineer at Genentech Roche

Every 30 minutes a woman in Zimbabwe dies due to pregnancy related complications. Zimbabwe is facing a fast growing maternal and infant mortality rate. Out of 7 babies born in one night at a major Zimbabwean hospital, only 1 of them made it alive and the other 6 were stillborn. There's an increase in number of women dying while pregnant and some women are giving birth in unsafe conditions leading to their deaths because the hospitals are underequipped or out of reach. Most infants are not making it past the age of 1 due to complications the mother encountered during pregnancy.

Our target audience is Pregnant mothers and various health care providers.

1. The pregnant mother will be able to register themselves and receive daily information about their pregnancy from the app. The app will also help them learn if they are in any danger by constantly sending information on danger warning signs.

2. Midwives can register themselves so expecting mothers can easily have access to them to ensure safe and well planned home births. Midwives can also get even more educated on the complications of childbirth and how best to solve them. 

3. Doctors & Nurses will get easier access to their patients. Tanyaradzwa will allow them to securely store patient files, communicate with expecting mothers and making appointments. It will also allow them to plan for any upcoming due dates.

We are trying to decrease the number of women and infants dying during pregnancy and childbirth. We have been conducting research interviews with pregnant women, those who recently gave birth and health care providers on how best we can solve the current escalating issues of infant and maternal mortality.

The Tanyaradzwa helps decrease maternal and infant mortality rates. Pregnant women, mothers and their infants would hopefully be able to live long fulfilling lives.

It helps in keeping women alive and saving them from dying from complications during pregnancy and birth by educating themselves. The mobile app will provide knowledge to both the expecting mothers and health care providers.

It is inline with Zimbabwe and the World Sustainable Development goals, to ensure everyone has good health and well being and to fight for maternal health especially amongst black women.

Tanyaradzwa aims to help the low income underserved and vulnerable communities in Zimbabwe who do not have health insurance, who cannot afford hospital visits and some who do not even have a hospital within their reach. 

Most pregnant women in these situations are opting to give birth at home alone and under unsafe conditions after having gone through their pregnancy without even visiting the doctor once. The hospitals are sometimes underequipped and understaffed and incapable of serving their needs.

Tanyaradzwa aims to act as the doctor they clearly need but cannot afford by educating the pregnant women on how best to take care of themselves and connecting them with health care providers they can afford like midwives. Women will be better equipped on how to stay healthy during pregnancy and how to spot any early danger warning signs during and after pregnancy. 

Using midwife cells, mobile app and stay in at hospitals we hope to ensure smooth delivery amongst pregnant mothers since this allows for health care providers to better prepare for due dates and safe and sanitary environments.

Fully implement the mobile and midwife cells in various communities and actively track progress and address any issues that may rise. Register over 5 000 pregnant women and healthcare providers during the pilot and increase to 100 000 within the first year. We aim to spark and facilitate conversations between health care providers, health facilities, expecting mothers and their families which will help us impact over 1 million Zimbabweans and Africans within the next 5 years. Use Zimbabwe as a pilot country on how best we can implement this and tailor it to every African country depending on their economic and health set up.

We plan on partnering with medical institutions and well as international organization that already work with the underserved low income communities. We also hope to work with the government ministry of health and ministry of women affairs to help reach the women masses. We will also be partnering with different religious institutions as they are a pillar of our country. We hope to work with academic and research institutions who are also working in this area

Our main plain to measure impact is by looking at maternal and infant mortality statistics and how they are going to change after the implementation of Tanyaradzwa.

We will also monitor our impact by how many people we have managed to reach, registered and new recruits both mothers and health care providers

How rapidly our midwife cells will be growing and also measuring their success rate and potential for expansion

How hospitals will be better prepared to accommodate expecting mothers and how often they are utilizing our platform to schedule appointments and obtain patient records and communicate with patients

The amount of awareness and conversation around our platform and our partnerships with different other institutions

Our main aim to make sure we do not wake up to another headline of women and 6 infants dying during childbirth. If we educate more mothers, recruit more expecting mothers and partner them with health care providers we will be making an impact

1. Financial resources to implement the program and see it come to fruition. Will need resources to travel to remote areas and possibly employ some nurses who will help with the program. 

2. Technical issues where we have to educate most of the users on how to use the app. Trying to find better ways to make internet data required to access the app much cheaper and easily attainable for everyone.

3. Pairing up midwives and nurses might pose to be a problem as the widwives might feel a bit undermined. There's need to do team building exercises and educating our cells on why they work best together than alone.

4. Some Health institutions may not be willing to go online and allow doctors to connect with patients on the app. There's need to educate health institutions on the advantages of tanyaradzwa and how it's going to make things easier.

Most of our barriers should be easily solved during our pilot test. It will be easier for the different groups to appreciate it and be willing to work together once they see our system fully function and how best it can actually save pregnant mothers and their infants.

HBCU Connect

Higherlife Foundation (scholarship recipient)

Andrew Yung International Scholars

Emergination Africa

Toastmasters International

Miss Zimbabwe

Women in STEM Zimbabwe

MAMBO Afrika Arts Zimbabwe

Young Architects Association Zimbabwe

Second Chance Zimbabwe

We are interested in this challenge because they focus on tech and data to make predictions, preparations and serve patients in an effort to treat deadly diseases and possible pandemics. We grew up in a community where having medical aid/health insurance is a luxury. A community where we didn’t have access to basic health, hospitals or clinics. This gives us a glimpse of what the future could look like, a future where all diseases are treatable and hopefully preventable. A future where people don’t have to suffer and a future where everyone gets a shot at life. This challenge equips individuals with the skills they will require to effect change in their communities. Trains them to become entrepreneurs and effect real change while giving them a platform to grow as individuals and as a team

 This challenge will hopefully give us a platform to implement our solution to the community that needs it. We are hoping to employ more women and build even better infrastructure to help us deliver the help needed by expecting mothers.

We would like to partner with any organization that have worked with maternal issues before.

From the Trinity Website we noticed Ruth Mwaura and Alia Rasoully have worked in this area before. We would love to learn more about their experiences and challenges they faced within their communities and how best they were able to push through them.

This is a new area for the Zimbabwean community and we are currently not sure what to expect in terms of response. Our group studies and talks have been positive but this has been on a small scale and we are hoping for a larger scale impact.