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Patient privacy
Our donors are told who they helped. They are not told that person's medical history. Holding both of those at once is the hardest design problem in this charity, and this page explains how we resolve it.
What a donor sees
- A first name only.
- An age.
- A town.
- A short piece about that person's life: what they do, who they live with, what they hope for.
- The general reason they needed care.
- An itemised breakdown of what the donation paid for, written in plain words.
- A cartoon avatar, matched to their age and gender.
What a donor never sees
- No photograph. Never. Patients are represented by a drawn avatar.
- No surname.
- No address beyond the town.
- No clinical record, and no copy of the doctor's actual prescription.
Why we rewrite the prescription
The bill a clinic sends us is a medical document. It contains drug names, dosages and clinical detail that would let a reader infer things about a person that are none of their business.
So before anything reaches a donor, a member of our team rewrites it into plain categories: "Consultation", "Tests", "Tablets", "Injections". The donor learns what their money bought. They do not learn somebody's diagnosis history.
Why an avatar rather than a photograph
A photograph of an identifiable ill person, distributed to strangers who paid for their treatment, creates a relationship we are not willing to create. The avatar is matched to age and gender so the person feels real, without making them findable or turning them into an exhibit.
The principle underneath all of this
The people we treat are not fundraising material. They are traders and farmers and grandmothers who had a bad week. They did not choose to become a case study in exchange for treatment, and we do not treat their dignity as the price of admission.
Stated plainly: you get to know who you helped. You do not get to know their medical history. That is theirs.
Data protection
Patient data is held securely and was designed to be from the first version of the system rather than added later. Access is limited to the team members who need it to check and process cases. Questions about how we handle personal data can go to info@dogoapp.org.
Give someone a treatment
Set up a £5 monthly donation and we will show you exactly who it treated. In Nigeria, £5 covers one person's entire treatment, usually with change.
Three ways to give, all working right now:
- Donate on WhatsApp. The quickest route. Message us and we will set it up inside the chat. No app to install, no forms, no password.
- Dogo Health on the App Store, or on Google Play. Set your amount once and you are matched with a new person automatically each month.
Monthly from £5, one-off from £10. Cancel any time from the app. Questions first? Write to info@dogoapp.org.