The New Doctor in Her Phone Almost Failed Her

By Aggrey Barasa - In our African homes, health has always been a matter of community. Grandmothers knew which leaves soothed a child’s cough. Mothers had whispered remedies for stomach cramps, and fathers knew the old herbalists tucked away deep in the village. 

But today, in the era of cheap smartphones and the internet, a new “doctor” has arrived and he doesn't live in the village. It lives inside a small glowing screen.

For Akinyi, a bright-eyed young woman in her early twenties, that online doctor became her closest confidant the moment her body began to whisper the unfamiliar signs of a first pregnancy. 

She did not know it was pregnancy then. All she knew were the strange morning sicknesses, the fatigue, and, later, the stabbing pain that seared through her lower abdomen.

Her boyfriend named Wekesa pleaded with her to visit the nearest clinic. He even offered to escort her. But Akinyi had already fallen in love with a friend she could trust more than anyone else, the artificial intelligence on her phone. The bot gave answers quickly, sounded confident, and most importantly, never judged. She had found her “doctor.”

The pains, however, grew worse. Then, one evening, while rushing to the pit latrine, Akinyi saw a dark clot slip from her body. She froze, shocked. Only then did she agree to go to the hospital. The ultrasound results shattered them both: she had miscarried, the doctor said, and the womb still carried remnants of the lost pregnancy.

The doctor prescribed medication to clear the uterus a bill of about Ksh. 5000 (roughly 40 US dollars). For Akinyi and her boyfriend, that mountain was too steep. They were barely surviving. They turned once again to the online “doctor,” who this time reassured them that herbal remedies could work just as well.

It was the familiar road of poverty and desperation. A friend brought them four liters of a thick brown herbal concoction. Akinyi drank it religiously, morning and evening. For a while, the pains seemed to ease. 

But soon after, her health began to crumble. She vomited everything she ate, fever kept her awake at night, and her body wasted away before Wekesa’s eyes.

Still, she typed her symptoms into the online chat. This time, the bot sounded alarmed. She must seek urgent clinical attention, it said, and undergo another ultrasound to confirm if the uterus was truly cleared.

Dragging her weakened body, Akinyi agreed. They chose a different hospital, one further away but reputed to be better. She lay on the cold bed as the sonographer pressed the probe against her stomach. The room went silent. Then the man pointed at the screen.

A tiny heartbeat flickered.

“You are still pregnant,” he said quietly. “Six weeks along. Your baby is alive.”

Akinyi and her boyfriend stared in disbelief. Alive? But hadn’t the first hospital said she had miscarried? Hadn’t the herbs nearly destroyed what was still growing inside her? The sonographer shook his head in disappointment. “Over-reliance on online doctors nearly costs you your child,” he said.

It was then Akinyi’s boyfriend wondered if even the first sonographer, overwhelmed or unskilled, had also whispered a question into his own online “doctor” before breaking the devastating news.

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But Akinyi’s ordeal was not just personal, it was a window into something bigger, a quiet form of violence that many women face.

We often speak of femicide as a man killing a woman. But what about when women die because of broken systems? Isn’t that femicide too, only less visible?

A health system priced beyond the reach of the poorest.

Training gaps that leave some sonographers unable to interpret scans correctly.

A technological system where global AI platforms dispense medical advice without accountability, disclaimers buried in fine print while rural women cling to every word as gospel.

Here, the weapon is not a knife but an algorithm. The killer is not a jealous man but a web of poverty, misinformation, and negligence. And like all femicides, the victims are disproportionately women,  young, rural, poor, and often voiceless.

Who Bears the Blame?

It is not enough to point fingers at Akinyi for trusting an “online doctor.” Tech companies design tools that sound authoritative even when they are dangerously incomplete. 

Health systems, underfunded and uneven, drive desperate mothers into the arms of machines. And governments, too slow to regulate AI or to subsidize maternal care, look away while tragedies unfold in silence.

Akinyi’s baby survived. But how many others have not? How many pregnancies ended prematurely because an ultrasound was misread, or because a bot on a cheap Android phone gave a half-answer, or because a family could not raise forty dollars for medicine?

This is femicide by neglect. Femicide by poverty. Femicide by design.

If femicide is to be fought, then accountability must expand. Tech companies must recognize that in Africa, their tools are not harmless toys,  they are lifelines for women who may have no alternative. 

Governments must invest in accessible, affordable healthcare and enforce quality standards for medical practitioners. 

Communities must teach their daughters that while the internet can inform, it must never replace the human doctor who carries both knowledge and responsibility.

Akinyi’s flickering heartbeat on the ultrasound screen was not just her baby’s. It was a warning: unchecked technology can quietly join the list of killers in a continent already burdened with too many graves.