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Article

27 Mar 2020

Author:
Farai Shawn Matiashe, Quartz Africa

WHO adopts Whatsapp platform developed in South Africa to provide information on the coronavirus outbreak

"WHO is raising coronavirus awareness globally using a WhatsApp bot developed in South Africa", 26 March 2020.

...In the social media age where hundreds of millions of people around the world have a a mobile device with access to platforms including Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, even while the world’s top scientists struggle to fully understand the scope of the pandemic, that need for trustworthy sources becomes vital, even life-saving. This is why a WhatsApp platform developed by the South African company, Praekelt.org to provide information on the coronavirus outbreak has been quickly adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to reach at least 50 million people around the globe...

Praekelt.org, a Johannesburg-based non profit organization, was running a...program for South Africa’s health department on maternal well-being when coronavirus rapidly evolved into a global pandemic, proposed to create the same platform for  health queries on Covid-19...The WhatsApp bot uses Turn.io’s machine learning technology to deliver automated responses for free with information on coronavirus including travel advice, latest numbers, symptoms and to dismiss myths and misconceptions. After having been successful in South Africa reaching over 2.6 million users, WHO was introduced to Praekelt.org by WhatsApp...The WHO WhatsApp platform dubbed WHO Health Alert which was launched by the organization on Mar. 20 surpassed 10 million users in just three days. The WHO Health Alert service is available in English while Arabic and Spanish WhatsApp service are expected to be launched this week with more than 20 languages, including Kiswahili, Farsi and Italian coming soon...