MXit, the very popular downloadable (instant messaging) chat application that drives parents up the wall as their teens sit glued to their phones through dinner, has now launched a new application where ‘MXiters’ can seek HIV counseling and advice through the low cost network.

In South Africa, the number of cellphones largely outweighs the number of landlines, but to contact the National AIDS Helpline from a cellphone, regular cellphone rates apply whereas using a landline is free of charge. This has posed many problems for South Africans who fear being overheard from a landline or public phone or simply don’t have access to one.

It is for these reasons that Cell-Life and Lifeline worked together to make HIV counseling more accessible to young South Africans in a medium that is most familiar, and comfortable to them.

Cell-Life said: “The main goal of this project was to create a mobile-based platform for youth and young adults to learn more about HIV and get support by offering them the ability to communicate anonymously and privately with a trained counselor at a very low cost.”

The service, which is targeted at MXit’s 18 million users between the general age of 12 and 35, allows users to add ‘RedChatZone’ as a contact where they can receive counseling, advice and information from a trained counselor at the very low data cost of $0.01.

This new medium has worked extremely well. According to Cell-Life “due to the less personal nature of chat, counselors found that users would get to the point far quicker. Counselors can also view chat history of clients, removing the need for the client to repeat ground already covered in previous counseling sessions.”

Another benefit to the RedChatZone is that fewer hoax messages are sent, as opposed to the National AIDS Helpline, where 80% of calls are prank calls that waste important counseling time. On MXit, counselors have the option to ignore the messages but “a possible reason for the decrease in hoax calls is that this costs the user a small amount of airtime that could rather have been spent on chatting with friends” said Cell-Life.

Considering that counseling can be provided from any computer connected to the internet, mobile text-chat is an ideal way of providing HIV counseling that is cheap, accessible from anywhere, and efficient. One counselor can chat with more than one client at the same time, making it ideal as a means to get youth to talk about HIV in a society where everyone fears being stigmatized.

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