The meteoric rise of the Internet and cell phones have prompted increasing global health programs to embrace high tech as a cost-efficient way of reaching large numbers of people with information on such issues as family planning, HIV prevention, and maternal and child health.
This is happening in countries like India, Tanzania, South Africa and Ethiopia, where technologies like the Internet, mobile phones, social media and geographic positioning systems are bringing health delivery into the 21st century.
But other programs are eschewing high tech and sticking with low tech as the best way to bring vital health information to their low-income consumers, at least for now. And they have good reasons for doing so.