TICAD8 side-event

The MCH handbook began in Japan and has spread to Africa and other developing countries. The benefits have been enormous in terms of recording the health of mothers and children and the growth of their children. On the other hand, in the case of paper-based operation, it does not reflect the benefit to public health, and by extension, to the mother and child. In these days of digitalization, it is desirable to build a system that can benefit as many mothers and children as possible by using smartphones to grasp the health of mothers and children as a mass, with complete coverage (so that no one is left behind). To achieve this, all parties involved in the MCH handbook and the registration of mothers and children must have a shared understanding and devise a system that will benefit individual mothers and children and the mass of mothers and children. In other words, it should be a system that enables the handbook to play a public health role in addition to its current position. It should be used to plan maternal and child health care and measure and evaluate policies. It is also necessary to protect personal information since it contains a lot of personal information.

It is necessary to build a platform to share such development information and establish a system that allows developers, users, government officials, and medical personnel to participate in the development. In response to the TICAD8, Japan, promoting the MCH handbook worldwide, should take the initiative to unite all concerned parties worldwide. Therefore, we decided to hold this side event to share information and gather ideas to fulfill the next step.