新手机应用帮助抗击埃博拉病毒

A new smart phone application is helping Health workers in Guinea in their fight against Ebola.

The West African nation is one of the worst hit by the deadly virus.

Health workers in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, are now using the app to locate and monitor people who may have come into contact with other confirmed Ebola patient.

The piles of paper work involved in the process have now been cut down, thanks to the new app.

The app called CommCare was designed by the UN Population Fund together with Columbia University.

Edwige Adekambi Domingo is head of the UN Population Fund in Guinea.

"We are in the 21st century and we are now adopting the latest developments in information technology. We decided to integrate this mobile application called CommCare into our contact tracing work."

The app allows field workers to share the latest information on the spread of the virus with hospitals at the touch of a button. A rapid response to any new cases can then be organized.

Almost 160 tracers in Guinea have been trained to use this app so far, and over 2,000 Ebola 'contacts' have been logged using the application.

The plan is to deploy the application in Sierra Leone, which has had the highest number of Ebola cases so far.