Transcript Dr Peter NGATIA

The opportunities for satellite
based services for improving the
health delivery in the subSaharan region
High level conference ''Space for the African Citizen"
Brussels, BELGIUM
16th September 2010
Presented by:
Dr. Peter Ngatia
Director for Capacity Building
AMREF
Nairobi, Kenya
Africa
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Africa in Perspective
The African continent is
huge. It is larger than
United States, India,
Argentina, Western
Europe, British Isles and
China combined.
Source: The Times Atlas
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Africa’s Health Challenges
Common and most urgent health challenges:
– Severe shortage of health care professionals
– Insufficient or even absence of health care for rural
and remote areas population
– Where clinics exist, they are often poorly equipped,
understaffed and situated beyond the reach of the
existing infrastructure
– High maternal and prenatal mortality rate.
– High burden of diseases of mostly preventable
disease.
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Opportunities for improving health care
Remote consultation, diagnosis and treatment;
Training and learning for health workers;
Gathering, compilation, dissemination of health
information;
Effective dissemination and access to research findings;
Monitoring, and reporting of public health threats and
response;
Health education.
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Why Satellite?
Fiber coverage across Africa. Minimal
access for land-locked and rural
communities.
Satellite coverage from just one
provider.
Africa’s share of global internet access is 1% of
which is in South Africa
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Fibre Optic in Africa
Does the execution of these fiber optic projects imply that
infrastructure obstacles within Africa will be shortly
overcome? Unfortunately, no.
– Approximately 80% of sub-Saharan African live in the
rural areas.
– The fibre optic is primarily around the coastal strip and
urban centres.
– It would require massive resources to lay cables that
connect towns with rural villages and facilities.
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Improving Health Delivery
Opportunities for improving health delivery in sub-Saharan
Africa using satellite-based services
MOH & national
level hospitals
Medical schools &
middle level colleges
District & primary
Health level health
facilities
Community
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Improving Health Delivery
Telemedicine (The delivery of health services using ICT e.g. satellite technology,
for diagnosis, treatment and preventions of diseases and injuries, and the Continuing
Medical Education of health care providers).
MOH & national level
hospitals
District & primary Health level
health facilities
– Rural health workers liaise with experienced
specialists on diagnosis and treatment (tele
consultation).
– Rural health workers continue practice-based
learning and professional development
(teleducation and teletraining)
– Rural facilities link to national health
information systems
– Extends the reach and coverage of health care
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– Faster patient referrals.
Improving Health Delivery
Training, Learning and Research
Medical schools & middle level
colleges
District & primary Health level
health facilities
– Availability of free literature data bases
(Hinari, African journals online)
– Telemedicine system archives cases as
case studies that can be used by schools
in teaching
– Teleducation and teletraining for
Continuing Professional Education (CPD)
of health workers
– Simulations
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Improving Health Delivery
Health information data and
information
Medical schools &
middle level colleges
Links
 C-HMIS with MOH
 D-HMIS with MOH
 N-HMIS with MOS
 Results into informed health
planning
District & primary Health level
health facilities
Community
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Preventing illness in Uganda
Veronica is a midwife in Southern Uganda. She uses her PDA for her
work and for her community. She travels to the wireless router that
stores the surveillance report for the entire district and where she
uploads reports from the rural health clinic where she works. She also
can down load news and medical information. If there is an outbreak of
measles somewhere in the district, she will learn of it before it reaches
her community. She can advise people how to prevent catching it.
Equally, if her report shows a local rise in cholera, the district will review
her data and send medications and specialist assistance to help out. It
used to take six months before the district would respond to this type of
distress message, if at all.
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Improving Health Delivery
Health Promotion and Education
– Provision of better health services for rural
communities e.g. Health Education messages.
– Surveillance of adherence to treatment e.g.
DOTs for TB and ART
– Disease and Emergency Tracking
District & primary Health level
health facilities
Community
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The Panafrica eNetwork
This is a US$50 million project which will connect 53 PAN-African
countries through satellite, fibre optics and wireless links fro providing
telemedicine, tele education, inter alia.
The Network will e VSAT based start network with 116 + 53 VSAT
terminal.
The Network will connect 5 universities - 2 from India and 3 from Africa
and 3 super specialised hospitals from India and 7 from Africa. These will
be connected to 53 remote hospitals.
The telemedicine system will support the 10 super speciality hospitals to
provide Continuous Medical Education (CME) in 53 remote collections.
http://www.panafricanenetwork.com/Portal/ProjectDetails.jsp?projectidhide=10&projectnamehide=Tele Medicine
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Satellite African eHealth vaLidation
(SAHEL) Project
Objective: To support
the extension of health
services to facilities and
communities in rural
Africa using satellite
technology in
complement to other
ICTs
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Constraints and challenges
Government regulatory policies
Cost of VSATS and bandwidth
Technophobia may slow take up
Poor government investment in ICTs in general
Cultural inhibitions and barriers that prevent use of ICTs
Capacity to service and maintain ICT infrastructure
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Long live the pioneers of this noble
programme! Thanks AMREF, thanks
Accenture, thanks NCK, thanks my
teachers. I can’t believe where I could
be if this programme had not began. I
could probably be still the naïve ECN
waiting for instructions from my bosses
without any contribution coming from
my side. Surely, technology has
revolutionised our lives and change
the way we did things previously. I am
now a proud KRCHN and waiting for
AVNS to commence the degree
programme.
Nurse Otieno from Kisumu, graduating class of December
2009
AVNS students during an eLearning training
session at AMREF
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Thank You!
Merci!
Questions?
www.amref.org
[email protected]
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