Marwuko/alaafei

Voice-first WhatsApp referral companion for CHPS-level maternal & child care in Northern Ghana ~ UNICEF StartUp Lab AI for Nurturing Care Hackathon # Alaafei **Voice-first WhatsApp referral companion for CHPS-level maternal and child care in Northern Ghana.** Built for the UNICEF StartUp Lab *AI for Nurturing Care* Hackathon by Team Alaafei — Felix Marwuko, Akaribo George Namtesime, Abonusum Naomi. ## The problem In Northern Ghana, maternal mortality stood at 234 per 100,000 live births (2023); the Northern Region alone accounted for 10% of the country's neonatal deaths between 2019 and 2023. When a CHPS nurse refers a mother or sick child to a district facility, no system confirms the family ever arrived. Referrals silently fail to distance, transport cost, and paper records — and nobody finds out in time. ## What Alaafei does 1. **Register** — nurse logs a referral on WhatsApp in under a minute 2. **Notify** — caregiver receives voice notes in their own language (recorded by a midwife): transport reminder, danger signs 3. **Confirm** — receiving facility confirms arrival with one reply 4. **Escalate** — unconfirmed referrals alert the nurse before it's too late 5. **Prioritize** — each morning the nurse gets a ranked household visit list with plain-language reasons ## Design principles - **Low-connectivity by design**: async store-and-forward messaging; SMS fallback; no caregiver smartphone required; no-phone households route through the nurse - **AI assists, protocols decide**: escalation and danger-sign logic follows GHS/IMNCI-aligned rules; language models only fill vetted templates; the nurse always decides - **Voice-first**: caregiver audio is recorded by a real midwife (our team's Naomi), not TTS - **Idempotent by construction**: WhatsApp retry storms can never double-register a referral ## Run it ```bash python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt cp .env.example .env # dev defaults work: SQLite + printed messages python scripts/seed_demo.py uvicorn app.main:app --reload pytest # end-to-end loop + escalation tests ``` Without M …