Nigeria - Rural medical care gets boost as UCH commences telemedicine

Citation

(2008), "Nigeria - Rural medical care gets boost as UCH commences telemedicine", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 21 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2008.06221fab.011

Nigeria - Rural medical care gets boost as UCH commences telemedicine

Article Type: News and views From: International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Volume 21, Issue 6

Keywords Quality teritary care, Health care delivery, Health care improvement

In a bid to ensure that quality tertiary health care is made available to the rural populace at their doorstep, the University College Hospital (UCH) telemedicine project has commenced its outreach health care services to the rural communities in its suburbs.

The telemedicine project, one of the projects of President Yar’Adua’s administration to encourage inter-ministerial relationship is a concept developed by the Ministry of Science and Technology that the Health ministry intends to use to improve health care delivery at the grass root level.

Dr Tope Longe, the officer in charge of the telemedicine project at the UCH, Ibadan, in an interview at the hospital, said with the hospital being the first recipient of the telemedicine mobile van in May. It now intends to give top priority to remote areas with no established health units, manpower to access good quality tertiary health care and primary health care centers in its outreach programme.

He explained that basically the mobile van equipped with different gadgets for communication will ensure that while the patients are being attended to at their doorsteps, another expert at the base station can watch over what is being done and give appropriate directives. This health care mobile unit will be manned by community medicine doctors and supported by public health nurses and they will offer treatment abroad the mobile unit. Through the wide computers and cameras they can diagnose the different problems and through the technical linkages with the base station have other experts on board the base station help ensure adequate care is provided.

According to Dr Longe, the beauty of the project is that it will revolutionize health care by helping to stop the issue of delay in people getting their health problems diagnosed and poor access to specialized medicare at the grass root. Aside from affording the county the opportunity to gather data on the prevalence of different diseases in the community, Dr Longe said, it is expected that each day the mobile unit goes out, it will be able to attend to at least 300 patients, children inclusive.

For more information, please visit: www.tribune.com.ng