Yaounde, Cameroon (Face2faceafrica) A new software device known as Calculator 28, aimed at helping women and girls in the Republic of Cameroon know and calculate their menstrual cycle to enable them plan better on when to conceive, has been launched in Yaounde on Wednesday.
The new software family planning method requires that, the user gets information through a text message on her mobile phone and then send an SMS to 198 to know the exact period she can conceive.
The initiator of the new family planning method software device, Dr. PAUL FRANK GOUDJOUT, explained to the press how it functions “Calculator 28 is a software that permits the user to calculate her menstrual cycle by sending a keyword [PERIOD] and put the date of start of menstruation, then [space], then duration of menstruation for the period 28 days and the user will receive all information concerning her cycle and finally, the user will have to send the message to 2188.”
Calculator 28 is developed to highlight ovulation; which is the fertile period in a woman’s monthly cycle.
According to the Secretary General in Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health, Prof. Coular Shoru Tinata, when women do not know how to calculate their cycle, there are bound to be multiplication of births, unwanted pregnancies, illegal abortions and high risk pregnancies.
In Cameroon, forty percent of women do not know how to calculate their menstrual period, according to a UN report in 2011, which further stipulates that two hundred million women in the world do not understand what family planning is all about. Still, about one thousand women die every day from pregnancy related complications.
Calculator 28 is already in use in Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Gabon and now Cameroon.
The software which is mostly available in urban areas can also be used as a kit which the initiator intimate that they are in need of funds to also create the physical kits to serve women and girls in rural areas who do not have mobile phones how to calculate their menstrual cycle and receive information concerning their fertile and unsafe periods for sexual intercourse.
