How 54,000 health workers and their smartphones are reshaping maternal care in Rwanda 🇷🇼🏥

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Rwanda is betting on digital tools to make pregnancy safer. By making it easier to collect, share and analyze medical data, these systems help health professionals follow expectant mothers more closely and flag high-risk cases sooner. At the opening of the fifth Africa HealthTech Summit, Minister of State for Health Yvan Butera said these tools had helped cut maternal mortality by 30% over the past two years. The claim points to a wider shift: digital transformation is becoming a core piece of how health systems get built.

Smartphones put care closer to home 📲

Community health workers sit at the center of the strategy. According to the minister, more than 54,000 of them use smartphones to log information collected from households and keep tabs on pregnancies. Because the data travels fast, cases that need extra attention can be spotted earlier. The women concerned are then referred to the right health facilities or specialists, which lowers the risk of complications.

Paper registers give way to digital records 💻

Rwanda has also been modernizing its health management tools with Community Electronic Medical Records (cEMR), a digital record system built for community health workers. The platform stores information on pregnancies, medical consultations and newborns. Digitizing the data makes it easier to access, track and use. It also improves coordination between the different players in the health system, and it reduces reliance on paper registers.

Data is steering health decisions 📊

Since April 2025, the National Health Intelligence Center (NHIC) has pulled together information from community health workers, health centers and hospitals. The platform gives authorities a broader picture of the country’s health situation and lets them monitor several indicators closely, maternal health among them. Using that data helps direct interventions faster and target needs on the ground more precisely.

Early results look encouraging ❤️

Over a longer period, the latest Demographic and Health Survey for Rwanda indicates that maternal deaths per 100,000 live births fell from 203 in 2020 to 149 in 2025. Over the same stretch, the share of women attending at least four antenatal visits rose from 47% to 78%. These results reflect the combined effect of several efforts, including the work of community health workers and the growing use of digital tools to follow patients.

Could wider use of digital tools help more African countries cut maternal deaths faster? Tell us in the comments.