Fondation Pierre Fabre

Ask The Paediatricians

Ask The Paediatricians

 A forum where paediatricians and other children's health care professionals provide evidence-based health education, information and professional answers to child-health related questions 

Main beneficiary countries:
Nigeria - Botswana - Kenya - South Africa - Ghana - Zambia - Uganda - Sierra Leone - United States - United Kingdom

About the sponsor

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation (ATP) is a registered non-governmental organization founded in 2015 in Lagos, Nigeria. Our Vision is to promote good health and well-being of children globally; especially in Nigeria and Africa, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3. Our mission is to provide evidence-based health education and information to parents and caregivers; support vulnerable children through community medical outreaches and other social projects; and empowering and training healthcare professionals working with children.

Our programs through which our mission is carried out include:

  1. Free Online Health Education on all social and print media platforms like Ask The Paediatricians Facebook Group where Paediatricians and other health care professional provide free health education, information and answers to various health questions by parents and caregivers of children;
  2. Community Medical Outreaches: organisation of community Medical Outreaches nationwide in Nigeria since our first outreach in 2016 reaching more than 50,000 children and collaboration with many other institutions including faith-based and non-governmental organizations in providing the medical expertise for various community outreaches;
  3. Support for vulnerable children like the Annual Christmas Lunch for underprivileged children in Makoko in collaboration with other partners or the renovation of dilapidated school.

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation is a recipient of multiple awards and has been featured in local and international media including the BBC.

Sector: Organizational: Communities, public authorities, NGOs, associations, foundations, etc.

Country of origin: Nigeria

Contact the sponsor

Sponsor website

Initiative website

The organisation has:

0
Full-Time Equivalent
0
Employee
102
Volunteers
0
Service provider
Ask The Paediatricians

Initiative overview

Healthcare themes targeted

  • Mother and child health
  • Primary healthcare
  • Nutrition

Stage of development:

  • Routine project/operational

Area where initiative is utilised

  • International (in several countries)

Initiative start date

  • 07/20/2015

Financing

Financing method

  • Private (private investors, crowdfunding, philanthropy, etc.)
  • NGO

Economic model(s)

  • Advertising
  • Donations

About the initiative

This initiative aims to address the issues of ignorance, beliefs and practices based on myths that are contributing significantly to the number of preventable deaths of children in Nigeria and Africa.

The Ask The Paediatricians Facebook group started on the 20th July 2015 has over half a million members from more than 100 countries but majority are from Nigeria. This group is making a well-known and proven child survival strategy – health education – available on the social media platform of Facebook where many of the target audience are. It gives them a more interactive platform at their convenience that is not readily available or accessible with the traditional facilities.

The group is a health education and information platform for parents and caregivers of children with the aim of providing the right information to deal with ignorance entrenched beliefs and practices of myths that are often responsible for preventable deaths of children in Nigeria and Africa especially.

This is done through a very interactive forum which include:

  1. Members post their health questions directly on the group and have our professionals answer with evidence-based information within 48 - 72 hours.
  2. We do weekly group discussions (webinar) and video livestreaming (ATP LIVE) on topical health issues relating to child health issues with opportunity for members to ask clarifying questions.
  3. We have UNITS section that we have resources that are on promoting and preventive information on child health issues like exclusive breastfeeding, immunization, infants and young child nutrition and so on.

The group is accessible 24 hours 6 days a week excluding Sundays. All professionals and moderators who assist are purely volunteers. For those seeking to be anonymous, we provide email option for them to ask questions which is answered directly and also posted on the group anonymously by the Admin team.

Fields of application:

Information, education and communication for behaviour change (IEC)

Target audience

  • Entire population
  • Children - adolescents (ages 6-18)
  • Young children (0-5 years)
  • Current and potential parents and caregivers of children

Initiative objectives

  • Decreased mortality
  • Decreased morbidity
  • Improved treatment

Key figures

574411 Number of beneficiaries since launch

201186 Number of users per Day

Materials used

  • Cellular (mobile) phone
  • Smartphone
  • Tablet
  • Computer

Technologies used

  • Internet
  • Mobile app (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, HTML5, etc.)

Offline use

No

Open Source

Yes

Open Data

Yes

Independent evaluation

Yes
evaluated independently

Partners

Facebook

Industrial: Startups, enterprises, etc.

Partners

Collaborators

startupBrics