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Namibia: ICT Transforming Health Sector
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New Era (Windhoek)
9 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Catherine Sasman
Windhoek
Africa should spruce up its e-health services to ensure improved access to health services as a fundamental human right, argued delegates at the IST-Africa Conference in Windhoek, New Era reports.
It is estimated that more than 33 million people are HIV infected, and that 90 percent of these people are living in settings with limited resources. In Africa, this health pandemic is considered the most important health challenge.
By December 2003 the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS launched the '3-by-5' initiative to help low- and middle-income countries provide treatment to three million people living with the disease by the end of 2005.
According to Maria Zolfo from the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITMA) in Belgium, although the '3-by-5' target has not been met yet, the global efforts to scale up access to anti-retroviral treatment (ART) has brought positive changes worldwide.
At the end of 2006 more than two million people living with HIV are treated with ART in low- and middle-income countries.
"Telemedicine is a way to assist delivery of care in remote areas," said Zolfo.
Telemedicine is considered as one of the fastest growing areas of information, communication and telecommunication (ICT) applications that are used in the health sectors for services enhancement.
It started in the 1920s, but has since evolved, and its use in developing countries is reported to be on the increase.
According to studies, it offers a wide range of benefits, including accessibility to health services, efficiency, improved professional education, quality control of screening programmes and reduced healthcare costs.
With the necessity to support doctors in low resource settings to treat patients with newly introduced ARTs and to offer good standard of care for opportunistic infections, Zolfo said the ITMA - a leading institute providing training, research and assistance in tropical medicine and health care in developing countries - has introduced and set up a computer aided training programme for healthcare providers working in low-resourced areas.
Telemedicine advice has initially been through an e-mail network but later through a discussion forum on a telemedicine website.
"Patient's history, physical examination, laboratory findings and questions to be answered are sent to a HIV/AIDS specialists' network using this discussion forum on the telemedicine website. All postings submitted to this discussion forum are stored in an electronic database and available for consultation," explained Zolfo.
The telemedicine website, she said, respects the Health On the Net Foundation Code of Conduct, which is elaborated to standardise the reliability of medical and health information on the web.
The intent of the use of the technology, she said, is to guide doctors in scaling up the ARV process and HIV/AIDS patients care.
This is one of the initiatives highlighted at the IST-Africa 2008 conference in Windhoek where participants deliberated areas of cooperation between the European Union and African partners for the development of a robust information, science and technological landscape in Africa in various fields.
As far as the health sector is concerned, said Dusan Soltes from the Comenius University in Slovakia, there exists a "natural urgency" for more attention on the health sector as far as the ICT connectivity is concerned.
"From the EU [European Union] perspective, this is mainly due to an aging population and the necessity to extend the productive age and offer a better and more accessible health care services; in Africa is it mainly to fight against HIV/AIDS and other endemic diseases such as malaria that in some regions on the continent have already almost wiped out a rather significant portion of the population in the most productive age, leaving a lot of orphans to be cared for by their grandparents. Hence, although for different reasons, it is a common task for the EU and the AU [African Union] to join forces for further development of the health care system and e-health as one of the fundamental human rights for their people," Soltes said.
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A major obstacle, however, is the level of development of e-infrastructure in different African states as a basic technical precondition for maximum utilisation of what e-health can offer.
Soltes said for a practical implementation of e-health systems, necessary legislation and organisational preparations should continue, which includes parallel activities for greater public awareness of health services as a fundamental human right.
Such a campaign, said Soltes, should be launched by the AU in close cooperation with the African, Caribbean and Pacific institutions "without delay".
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