Instead of sending the woman on a long and expensive journey to visit the local health clinic, Rosa picked up her new mobile phone and dialled a local doctor who gave her advice on how to treat the patient.

“The doctor told me to check the mother’s blood pressure every two days and to give her medication. He also advised me to give her healthy food and to tell her to have more rest,” Rosa said.

“The woman’s blood pressure has now reduced from 160 to 130 but I’m still checking it every couple of days,” she said. “She will deliver her baby soon and her blood pressure is already normal. There’s still the possibility it may rise again when her time comes, if she gets nervous, but I’ve known about this risk for some time so I’m aware and prepared.”

Rosa is amongst more than 100 midwives, in the tsunami ravaged province of Aceh, participating in a World Vision pilot research project that hopes to reduce infant and maternal mortality rates during pregnancy and child birth.

Thanks to this project, Indonesian village midwives can now dial help when assisting pregnant women with complicated births.

The Information Communications Technology for Development Project (ICT4D) enables the midwives to phone a doctor or obstetrician 24 hours a day, seven days a week whenever they find a patient at risk or face a challenging delivery.

“With these mobile phones we can reduce the mortality of mothers and babies indirectly because with a mobile phone we can communicate quickly and when we face a high risk case handle it with speed,” Rosa said.

Indonesia has one of the Southeast Asian region’s highest maternal mortality rates at 307 deaths per 100,000 live births; a figure that is seven times higher than that of neighbouring Thailand and five times higher than China.  The rate of infant mortality during birth in Indonesia is currently 42 per 1000 live births.

The remote province of Aceh, which was ravaged by the December 2004 tsunami that left 130,000 locals dead , 30,000 missing presumed dead and more than 500,000 homeless, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Indonesia.

Rosa, who dreamed of becoming a midwife whilst still a teenager, has worked in the profession for more than 12 years and delivers around 10 babies a month. On average, she says, she runs into problems a couple of times a month.

Rosa says the mobile phone will help her get expert assistance to diagnose problems quickly and determine which cases need to go to hospital immediately, enabling midwives like her to send complicated cases to the hospital and focus on delivering the normal births at home.

“I had a baby die during delivery at my house once. After birth, the baby didn’t cry and I gave it mouth to mouth resuscitation but it still didn’t cry. That baby died in my arms because we didn’t have good equipment. Today, I know I could have saved that baby.”

Rosa now has a car and can transport her patients to the local hospital herself but there were times in the past when it wasn’t so easy.

“I remember a newborn baby dying when I had to bring it to hospital by motorcycle. The wind hit the baby and it died on the way,” she says sadly.

The ICT4D project is a collaborative program between World Vision, UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Through the program, more than 200 Acehnese midwives and local midwife coordinators have been trained in new skills including difficult deliveries and data collection. Over 100 were also provided with a mobile phone and instructions on how to use it. Like Rosa, they are already using them to dial for assistance and save lives.