Published 11 August 2015
Years ago in many South African remote villages, Yellow pages was the most essential tool used for connecting people to businesses, product and services by providing all the relevant information about them. Today we are living in the digital age where the access of information is made easy due to the excessive use of technology.
FPD Compass in partnership with into4africa produced a health and social services directories that has been used in South Africa since 2007. In 2013/14 we were able to cross borders and partner with over 2000 sites across the SADC region, (Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) for referral purposes both in public and private facilities.
North Star Alliance and FPD Compass worked together in creating an online directory called Mesedi. ME-SE-DI stands for Medical Services Directory which is an online tool that assists users in finding their nearest health care facility based on their location and required services.
Users can access the website at mesedi.org from their mobile device or computer (preferably ensuring that the GPS functionality is enabled), the site will access the location of the user and place them on a map and a list of services will also be provided, alternatively the user can search for the services they require. Once this is done, the website will pull up a list of health facilities/services that are available, ranked from closest geographical proximity to furthest. The user can click/scroll to any of the services on the list or on the map.
Once selected, the facility details will appear which include details of services offered, operating hours, phone numbers and addresses. It also has a click-to-call button and a get-directions button which provides accurate navigation from where the user is to the facility.
This is the first cross border initiative of its kind and by far the most well supported database in comparison to any other online directory in the region.
For more information please visit www.mesedi.org