Makerere student to showcase reproductive health app

A Ugandan university student is among the ten innovators selected to showcase their health apps at the Women Deliver conference in Copenhagen, Denmark next week.

Margaret Nanyombi's BVKit emerged among the top ten apps after a global call ahead of the conference, for apps that benefit girls and women.

The app will feature in the Appy Hour on Tuesday May 17 to the over 5,000 global health professionals, donors, media outlets, and policymakers attending the largest global meeting on advocacy for women and girls health and rights.

"It is overwhelming and humbling," a visibly excited Nanyombi said of the opportunity. "I have just always wanted to help as many people as possible," she said.

The BVKit is a self-test application that helps women check for unhealthy vaginal bacteria that cause a common infection, bacterial vaginosis.

The condition may present with a foul odour, fishy smell, vaginal itching, burning while passing urine and a grey or greenish discharge.

Dr James Lutaaya, a medical specialist Dr James Lutaaya, a medical scientist who has encouraged Nanyombi along the way from the first time she walked into his clinic with idea says sometimes sufferers have no symptoms.

Nanyombi a final year student of Information Science and Technology at Makerere University got interested in developing the app after a close friend lost a mother to cervical cancer.

"I had questions. What caused it? Could she have known early to prevent it?" she and the friend struggled with the loss.

In the quest for answers they went through the friend's mother's medical records over the years and noted an incidence of Bacterial Vaginosis, BV.

"We asked medical doctors who explained that BV made women susceptible to other infections including the human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer."

Nanyombi and her team, CODE GURUS, set to work researching ways they could help detect BV.

Today the BVkit, a combination of a device that takes values from the urine and with a phone app provides women with information on her susceptibility to the infection is at a development stage of giving 70% accuracy.

"We have to achieve 90% accuracy to progress to applying for conformity with international health standards and clinical testing," she says.

 "It (the app) is a very good idea. Right now the biggest challenge among the young people are their health seeking behaviours yet they are susceptible to (sexually transmitted diseases," noted Lutaaya.

"It is not easy to come up with an app to examine the pelvis. The idea of hardware that can work with an app is therefore a good compromise," he said.

Lutaaya explained that the app is not a gold standard test for BV, however it is a tool that makes you aware of your vulnerability to it and guides you to seek help.

Nanyombi is working to build into the app a location map to link users to the nearest gynaecologist for further tests to encourage proper diagnosis and discourage self-medication.

The importance of early diagnosis cannot be under estimated in women's reproductive health especially if it is to nip deadly diseases in the bud.

Cancer of the cervix is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women in Uganda and most get to care when it is too late to save them.