Meeting with the NGO ‘Women and Health Alliance International’ (WAHA)

We met with Dr. Sinan Khaddaj (Secretary General) and Cheikh Mbaye (Information Technology and Web Manager) in Paris on December 15th.

‘Women and Health Alliance International (WAHA) is an international non-profit, non-governmental organisation based in France that has been launched by Her Highness Sheikha Shamsa bint Hamdan Al-Nahyan, with the over-arching goal of addressing maternal and neonatal health in disadvantaged communities throughout the world.’

We shared a lot on their experience and their vision: new technologies are actually a great opportunity to improve health in poor areas. WAHA believes that they have to evaluate the people needs first, then see how to meet them and eventually use new technologies to accelerate and improve the solutions.

Here is a typical example of what has been achieved in Senegal together with the Fistula Fondation: they have brought ambulance to the villages within a 70 km radius of district hospital to allow the sick women to be taken care of as soon as possible.

WAHA also has projects in the field of telehealth (telediagnostic, electronic medical records) and in the implementation of new devices (e.g. they are currently looking for reliable and fast technologies to determine blood antigens when emergency transfusion is needed).

For all these reasons, WAHA and HTech4Dev will find opportunities to set up projects together in these areas.