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     Simple Cellphones Seen as Key to Improving Ebola Education, Reporting

   by Adam Phillips

   West Africa's Ebola threat has been made worse by inept, ineffective
   and poorly targeted information about the latest developments and what
   can be done to help, according to philanthropist-entrepreneur Jon
   Gosier.

   Gosier, speaking to reporters recently in New York, said rural African
   communities need to better understand the implications of the disease
   and how best to avoid spreading it. But in the West, there is also "a
   huge information crisis in how the story is being reported," he said.

   "The lack of local voices telling the story, I think, has led to a lot
   of hysteria, a lot of fear, a lot of tension in the way everything has
   been covered," Gosier said.

   To help improve the reporting about the crisis, Gosier and
   Appfrica.com, his technology and software development company, have
   teamed up with Isha Sesay, a CNN anchorwoman and correspondent of
   Sierra Leonean descent, and News Deeply, a multimedia journalism
   company, to form Ebola Deeply, a multimedia news and information
   platform. Their goal, Gosier said, is "to impact the story as much as
   we are trying to cover it."

   Gosier used a computer screen to display the home page of the Ebola
   Deeply website and described some of its features.

   "In the top right, we've got the total number of cases. ... Then we
   have an interactive map that shows exposure in particular countries,"
   he said. "Video plays an important role. So we are capturing stories of
   survivors on the ground, perspectives of people within communities that
   are affected, and pushing those out live to the site as well."

   Online news sites have relatively small audiences in rural Africa,
   where Internet infrastructure is sparse. Three-quarters of Africans,
   however, use mobile phones. Most are basic phones that cannot connect
   to the Internet but can receive and transmit text and voice messages
   and photographs. So Gosier and his partners have also created Mobile
   Wire, which delivers Ebola Deeply's content for those phones.

   "If you look at the demography of the country, you see that most of
   these people are, unfortunately, illiterate," Gosier said. "So how do
   we help them receive the same amount of information? ... It makes a lot
   of sense that we send mostly voice messages to them, whereas in the
   urban centers, we might send more text messages, because those folks
   tend to be more educated."

   A key part of the plan is to encourage users of basic phones to send
   content back to Ebola Deeply, which then makes that information
   available to health care providers and nongovernmental organizations
   while also giving journalists information about the human face of Ebola
   in remote areas.

   A pilot program in Ghana, which so far has escaped the virus, worked
   well. Gosier said the next steps are to replicate that success in
   Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone until the Ebola crisis has passed, and
   to keep the infrastructure in place and available for the world's next
   major health crisis.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/cellphones-key-improving-ebola-educat
   ion-reporting/2521277.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/cellphones-key-improving-ebola-education-reporting/2521277.html