Cape Town - A cellphone app developed by two Stellenbosch brothers is being used in the fight against Ebola.
Stellenbosch University graduates Malan and Philip Joubert, who recently moved to Silicon Valley in the US to expand the tech start-up Journey Apps, developed the Ebola Care App.
It is being used in Liberia by non-profit organisation More than Me.
“The Ebola outbreak is the kind of thing you assume other people are worrying about… until you realise that perhaps you are the other people and it’s time to start doing something,” Philip said.
The brothers contacted More than Me to talk about their biggest struggles to fight the disease.
Judy Hofmeyr, communications strategist at Journey Apps, said the Ebola Care App had four functionalities.
She said that when a patient was picked up by an ambulance a paper form was used to collect their details and it could take a long time before this was processed by a medical centre.
By using the app, the information could be captured quickly and sent to the medical centre as well as be recorded on a central database, which could be used by the government and NGOs, for example.
Hofmeyr said people who had come into contact with someone with Ebola were quarantined, often at home. These people often needed food or other items to be brought to them in a safe way.
The app was being used to remind NGOs of which houses to visit and when.
Journey funded all the development and was providing the app free of charge, but more phones were needed to provide further assistance.
Meanwhile, Facebook was stepping up its efforts to fight Ebola by adding a button designed to make it easier for its users to donate to charities battling the disease.
The social media company was deploying 100 satellite communication terminals to boost internet and phone services to affected areas in West Africa, where the disease has killed nearly 5 000 people.
The programmes come on the heels of a $25-million (R278m) donation last month by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention toward the Ebola response.
Facebook Inc said that, in the coming week, its users would see an option to donate to three nonprofits fighting Ebola. The groups are the International Medical Corps, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and Save the Children. Facebook said it chose charities that worked on the ground and were able to accept money globally.
Facebook is hoping its donation button will increase the money going toward Ebola response efforts. Ebola aid donations have lagged behind large natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines last year and the earthquake in Haiti four years ago.
So far, the American Red Cross has raised nearly $3.7m for Ebola relief. In comparison, it received $486m after the Haiti earthquake and more than $88m in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
Cape Argus