The programme has been flagged off at UCH, Ibadan, Africa’s designated super specialist hospital due to availabililty of experts in virtually almost all aspects of medical care. As a result of the commencement of the programme in UCH, African countries requiring information on medicine or expert management would be able to link with the hospital if they have a problem they cannot solve on their own.
The PAN-African e-health programme is solely sponsored by the Indian government to assist the Nigerian government in delivery of health care to its citizens by providing access to medical information through teleconferencing.
Dr. Tope Alonge, the Deputy Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, on behalf of the hospital, said the UCH would connect 53 nations by satellite and fiber-optic network.
The network that was primarily to provide tele-education, telemedicine, video conferencing and support e-governance and e-commerce, according to Dr. Alonge, would also come very useful on issues of disaster management.
“With these facilities that would be working all round the clock, when a disaster occurs, we can send in the telemedicine bus. Therefore, people can get better treatment at the scene of the problem since experts on ground at the teaching hospital and even India can easily be networked with via this satellite and this would make a lot of difference to treatment offered at the scene.
Project Coordinator, Mr. Saikat Kumar Dutta, said the project, which is being done in phases, has cost Indian government $100 million and that it would be supported by the Indian government for a period of five years.
“This is part of the India’s commitment to socio-economic development of Africa and help to bridge the continent digital divide,” he stated.
Thus far, he said that in Nigeria, University of Lagos has being designated as a learning centre location, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) as a patient end location and the office of the President of Nigeria as a Voice Over Internet Protocol(VVIP and Video-conferencing facilities.
Meanwhile, Dr Simpa Dania, consultant in Health informatics at UCH, described the initiative as beautiful.
“We realised that not everyone can come to the hospital at the same time, all can’t travel for expert care, say in India, but we can provide expertise from India and our own experts to meet the needs of people. There would now be opportunities for continue education for health workers without them having to leave their locations too.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sade Oguntola
Quelle/Source: Nigerian Tribune, 22.01.2009
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