Telemedicine has played a major role in healthcare delivery in most urban areas during the covid pandemic unlike in the rural communities that suffer from healthcare delivery due to many factors. Telemedicine and mobile health are about the development and improvement of health care by digital and internet technology.Telemedicine is all about delivering healthcare services remotely. One of the possible examples is synchronous telemedicine which is a real-time interaction between healthcare providers and patients through video communication software. During such visits, doctors go further than just diagnosing the condition of a patient. They also suggest home care, give prescriptions, track treatment, and schedule follow-up consultations. Another possible example is store-and-forward telemedicine which is very similar to exchanging emails where both parties can answer questions, share images, videos, test results and even record voice messages.
Why Telemedicine/eHealth for Rural communities in West Africa?
Telemedicine or health kiosks can save many people in the rural areas. For example I am originally from Ghana and do visit villages around the Volta River. There are no good accessible roads in the rural areas and most of the dwellers are peasant farmers or local fishermen. No health posts in these areas or even if there’s one at all, the dwellers have to walk over 10km to be able to reach a health post. Furthermore, most of these villagers suffer from various chronic illnesses which need frequent monitoring and evaluation but due to lack of healthcare services and infrastructures, their therapy systems don’t go according to standardized plans.
Promoting and Awareness on Telemedicine/Health?
The use of wearable technologies and sensors such as mini ECG, smartwatches, fitness trackers and implantable blood glucose monitors are on the rise and many people are talking positively about it.
Sol Yaa, 14.04.23
These devices can take parameters about the patient’s activities such as number of steps per day, stress level, sleep patterns, body hydration, Oxygen level, Pulse and blood pressure.
Myhealth MyAfrica Outreach strongly believes that, telemedicine/ehealth/health kiosks can play key role. These wearables have significant impact and these devices are communicating between patients and Healthcare providers via mobile vendors like air tel etc. Experiences gathered from our fieldwork is that, Airtel works perfectly in most of these rural areas. To make this successful, MyHealth myafrica Outreach conducted few interviews with some villagers and Health professionals during our annual fieldworks in Ghana and Nigeria, we realized that, most people in these rural areas can benefit well from eHealth /Telemedicine. These technologies should be affordable for common man and we are working with other agencies in order to spread the health awareness and if possible free deliveries.
Many folks nowadays have phone which are sms capable and so sending text alerts/tips related to the conditions they face is one of the options. This will work very well between the Healthcare providers and their patients in these rural areas.
# Sol Yaa. G