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Summary
Following the success of Mobitel Helpline Services which was launched by Her Excellence Mama Anna Mkapa, November 2001, TAYOA was awarded funding for scaling up this service to involve all mobile telephone companies and TTCL.
TAYOA
has established a call centre at Hugo House Kinondoni Dar es Salaam with
5 Computer terminal and comprehensive HIV/AIDS database. This centre will
be used to provide telephone based bilingual (English and Kiswahili) pre-
counseling services and provide appropriate referrals based on regularly
update database on HIV/AIDS treatment and management services providers.
TAYOA has been awarded fund from donor community through the Rapid Envelope
Funding, (Dolloite & Touche) to run the project for nine months. Tanzanian
Telecommunication Corporate, Celtel International, Mobitel Tanzanial,
Vodacom Tanzania, Zantel and TTCL under Corporate Social Responsibility
have also donated into this program.
Progressive report
The National AIDS Helpline was launched on January 30th 2004. This report provides a summary of the data collected through the Helpline within the first month of its operation (February 2004).
- The total number of calls recorded in February 2004 was 2780.
- 73.7% of the callers stated that they were Satisfied, Moderately Satisfied, or Highly Satisfied with the service that they received. 26.1% were not satisfied with the information that they received.
- Of the calls received, the majority were from Mobitel (38.0%) and Vodacom (36.8%) customers. Celtel (13.2%) and TTCL (12.0%) customers accounted for the remainder of the calls.
- The helpline was used most by Tanzanians between 20-29 years of age (accounting for 68.6% of the calls). Many calls were also made by people in between the ages of 30-39 (15.1%) and teenagers between the ages of 15-19 (12.6%).
- More than three-quarters of the calls (78.8%) were made from Dar es Salaam.
- Men called the helpline more frequently than women (70.8% of the calls vs. 29.2%). Interestingly, the proportion of male and female callers was nearly equal in the ‘0-14’ and ‘15-19’ age category.
- 86.5% of the callers were calling the AIDS helpline for the first time, and 8.6% had received a referral to the helpline.
- Nearly all of the questions were asked in Kiswahili (98.5%).
- The majority of callers had heard about the helpline via advertisements aired on television (56.0%) and radio (24.7%). Posters also contributed to public awareness (11.6%).
- These media trends were relatively consistent across age and gender; however, men were slightly more likely than women to have heard of the AIDS helpline through the radio (26.0% vs. 19.4%), whereas women were slightly more likely to have heard about the helpline through television adverts (64.0% vs. 53.5%).
- Helpline Callers most frequently asked questions regarding Transmission (27.8% of the questions) and Testing (26.9%). Other common topics included Condoms (9.7%), Symptoms (8.9%), and STDs (8.1%). The secondary content of the calls followed similar trends; however there was more emphasis on Condoms and less emphasis on STDs.
- The primary content of the calls was consistent across gender and relatively similar between all age groups. However, it was noted that people falling into the “+40yrs” category were more likely to be interested in information regarding treatment and Home-based Care; whereas the younger generations were slightly more interested in prevention.
