Africa Telehealth Project

The centrepiece of Africa Telehealth's work is the hosting of conferences. For example, in collaboration with the Africa Telehealth Project, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa held a regional telemedicine conference in Nairobi, Kenya, February 19-21 1999. The conference, which was entitled, "The Role of Low-Cost Technology for Improved Access to Public Health Care Programs Throughout Africa," was designed to find ways to support African health care providers in their efforts to develop and implement self-sustaining telehealth services. Participants focused on developing a strategic plan for identifying and coordinating the use of technology for improved access to and delivery of cost-effective public health care programmes in Africa. Discussions also explored ways of securing operating funds for telemedicine initiatives. Resolutions were passed to:

• call on African countries to encourage the use of information and communication technologies in the health sector;
• recommend that needs assessment in telehealth application be conducted at the national level;
• ask African governments to facilitate regional cooperation and strengthened South-South and North-South cooperation in order to share knowledge, resources, and networks to foster health care services, teaching, and research in Africa; and
• request that African governments, national institutions, universities, and private sector and developing aid agencies support these principles and activities.

For details on more recent conferences, visit the Africa Telehealth Group website.

Africa Telehealth often partners with other organisations to achieve its objectives. For example, working with Doctors Telehealth Network, Inc., Africa Telehealth Group is providing an opportunity for nurses in Africa to obtain training and employment in the United States (US). This initiative draws on satellite, server technology, wireless, and cellular technology, combined with videoconferencing, to mentor and teach.

To cite another example - and one that illustrates the initiative's reach outside of the African continent - in 2007 Africa Telehealth, in collaboration with a German company called tele-report, completed a pilot project at the Rawalpindi Medical College in Pakistan. This project now allows electronic transmission of radiological patient images such as x-ray, CT colonography (CTC), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) from Pakistan to Germany for interpretation and consultation. Plans are underway to expand this service to other medical institutions in Pakistan.

Health Care, Technology.

According to organisers, in the year 2000, Africa had one in eight of the world's fixed-line telephone subscribers, one in 60 of the world's mobile cellular subscribers, one in 70 of the world's personal computers, and only 1% of the world's internet users. Both Kenya and Tanzania have populations similar to Canada (30.3 million and 36.3 million, respectively), yet Kenya has one phone line for every 105 people and Tanzania has one for every 278 people.

In general, Africa TeleHealth claims, ICTs have proven crucial in terms of achieving improved health administration and connectivity within the African health sector, supporting the cure of disease, and improving distribution of lower-cost medical supplies. However, the health sector in Africa still lags very much behind other sectors in applying new technologies that are provided. Basic applications such as electronic medical records, hospital information systems, local networks for sharing and distributing information among health workers, provision of remote diagnostics via telemedicine, and community health information systems for local, regional, and national services have not been developed in Africa.