Harnessing emerging technologies for sustainable child health: Rethinking strategies for advancing SDG 3.2 in resource-constrained environments

Abstract

Despite the various interventions by governments and partnering organisations, many children the age of five years continue to lose their lives to preventable causes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate, from healthcare professionals' perspectives, the strategies implemented to fight under-five mortality in Zimbabwe's public healthcare system and to propose a rethinking of the strategies towards emerging technologies-driven interventions to advance the attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) 3.2. This study was part of a broader study that used a sequential exploratory mixed-methods research design, in which interviews and focus groups were used in the qualitative phase, followed by questionnaires in the quantitative phase. However, this paper only reports the findings of the exploratory (qualitative) phase, in which 20 participants from a public provincial hospital and clinics participated in online interviews and focus group discussions. Participants were selected using purposive sampling and snowballing. The NVivo software facilitated data analysis. Findings revealed that the current under-five mortality containment strategies in Zimbabwe include free access to care for under-fives and expectant mothers in public health facilities, provision of nutritional supplements, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, child immunization programs, maternal and child health programs, health education and behaviour change programs, integrated management of childhood illnesses, and community-based health initiatives. However, the under-five mortality rate in Zimbabwe, as in many sub-Saharan African countries, remains high. The poor under-five mortality outcomes are in part, due to challenges like high off-facility (home) births, late bookings for antenatal care services, inconsistent and insufficient supply of medicinal drugs, especially in hard-to-reach areas like rural areas, and an unresponsive national medicinal drug supply chain. The paper recommends rethinking the current strategies to address these challenges by harnessing emerging digital technologies to enhance sustainable child health., with the recent deployment of the electronic health record system in the country providing a facilitating condition for the successful implementation of a technology-driven public child healthcare system. This study seeks to provide an alternative, technology-driven approach to ending preventable child deaths and enhance the achievement of UN SDG 3.2. Although one could argue about the practicality of implementing emerging technologies in a resource-constrained setting, it should be noted that such settings have numerous nongovernmental players (such as the UNDP, World Bank, UNICEF and others) funding various programs to promote child and maternal health initiatives. Informed by the challenges faced by Zimbabwe in tackling under-five mortality, and the potential of emerging technologies in advancing child health, this study provides implementable recommendations to assist the healthcare policymakers in Zimbabwe and similar settings to harness the power of technology in advancing child health and reduce under-five mortality.

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