South Africa's mobile culture is beating AIDS

Teaching people about the disease, its consequences and how to avoid it will not only prevent more people from being infected, it will also help family members of those already stricken with AIDS to better deal with the situation.

To provide the broadest section of the South African population with an easy-to-use, 24/7 and cost-effective encyclopedia on HIV and AIDS, Dr Brian Monaisa has launched an online education portal accessible via any WAP-enabled mobile phone. The service, Live Reality, is available for free to anyone wanting to know more about this disease, all they have to do is pay for their bandwidth costs.

"The pages have all been designed to consume the least bandwidth possible, measuring less than 5 kilobytes each," says Monaisa. "This means the public will pay only about 1c per page each time they view it on their cellphones."

Monaisa continues that the idea was initially to make the information available on the Internet, but he realised that only a limited section of the population has access to the Web. "Almost everyone has a mobile phone which they can use to learn about AIDS," he adds. "The goal is to empower people with accurate knowledge, which they can then share with others."

To make the site more interesting and to encourage people to participate and learn as much as they can an HIV quiz is also available to surfers. People entering the right answers can win fantastic prizes from, including PSP or Nintendo game devices.

Moreover, to keep the site's innovative flair alive, a dictionary was also introduced recently. Not only can people check up on the meaning and spelling of words they are unsure of, but they can also add new uniquely South Africa words. Other users in the community then vote on whether the word is accurate and should be added to the dictionary.

The dictionary community is also able to share in the prizes, with people who submit words able to win an iPod if enough people vote for their entry. The motivation behind the prizes is to demonstrate to people that everyone wins when information is shared.

"When it comes to AIDS, sharing is not always easy as it is a very personal matter," explains, Monaisa. "Using a mobile phone as an educational device not only gets the information to more people, it also allows people to investigate and discuss this terrible disease in private without revealing their identity."

After the initial positive response to the site, Monaisa plans to expand the community sharing aspect of it by introducing forums as well as video streaming in the near future. The site is available at www.livereality.co.za via WAP-enabled phones.