Meet Alain Nteff.
This 28 year old engineer from Cameroon is on a mission to free the world from maternal and infant deaths. He's the creator of a non-profit called GiftedMom, which provides prenatal and antenatal care in two ways: through an SMS service with appointment reminders; and an app that helps women understand what kind of health care they need to have a safe pregnancy and delivery. Mothers can use the app to send questions to a doctor or midwife, and GiftedMom also has a fund that finances care for women in areas with no health care resources.
The seed for his idea was planted in 2012 when Nteff visited a hospital in rural Cameroon where a friend was doing his medical practice. While he was there he witnessed several mothers and newborns die from conditions that could have been easily prevented with proper care. Nteff was deeply affected by what he saw, and decided to do something about it. A year later, he launched Gifted Mom - the first digital platform for pregnant women and newborn babies in rural areas of Cameroon and other African countries.
Today, the app has almost 200,000 users, partners with 56 hospitals and clinics, and doctors and midwives are fielding around 5,000 questions a week from women around Cameroon. It's a simple intervention that's helping hundreds of thousands of expectant moms who might otherwise not have been able to get the help they need. "We want to save 25 million lives in the next decade,” Nteff says “This is for me. This is for my family. This is for my society.”
