{"id":59817,"date":"2014-10-27T09:45:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T09:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=59817"},"modified":"2014-10-27T09:45:15","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T09:45:15","slug":"ebola-tracking-system-for-sierra-leone-offered-by-ibm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=59817","title":{"rendered":"Ebola tracking system for Sierra Leone offered by IBM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"story_continues_1\" class=\"introduction\">IBM will put its super-computing data crunching to use in Sierra Leone, as part of the fight against the deadly disease Ebola.<\/p>\n<p>It has launched a system which allows citizens to report Ebola-related issues and government, health agencies and others to keep track of the disease.<\/p>\n<p>Citizens can use SMS or voice calls that are location-specific.<\/p>\n<p>The data will then be analysed to identify correlations and highlight issues.<\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/78488000\/gif\/_78488096_ibmebola2.gif\" alt=\"Man texting\" width=\"350\" height=\"339\" \/><strong>The system is easy for citizens to use<\/strong><\/div>\n<p>Already, regions with growing numbers of suspected Ebola cases have been pinpointed and the delivery of urgent supplies such as soap and electricity have been sped up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We saw the need to quickly develop a system to enable communities directly affected by Ebola to provide valuable insight about how to fight it,&#8221; explained Dr Uyi Stewart, chief scientist of IBM Research in Africa.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Using mobile technology, we have given them a voice and a channel to communicate their experiences directly to the government.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Khadija Sesay, director of Sierra Leone&#8217;s open government initiative, said it had helped &#8220;open up a channel with the general public so that we can learn from their input and create actionable policies in the fight against Ebola&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Radio broadcasts are being used to encourage people to use the system and telco operator Airtel has set up a free number via which citizens are able to send SMS messages.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IBM will put its super-computing data crunching to use in Sierra Leone, as part of the fight against the deadly disease Ebola. It has launched a system which allows citizens to report Ebola-related issues and government, health agencies and others to keep track of the disease. Citizens can use SMS or voice calls that are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":59818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-59817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-akwasi-osei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/59818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}