Teleradiology and rural consultations in Ethiopia

Ethiopia : the population is 56.9 million, including 45.5 million in rural areas. Mortality rate under age 5 is 159 per 1,000 births. Ethiopia suffers from a severe shortage of health care professionals, especially in remote and rural areas. People need improved communications to link remote clinics and hospitals with urban hospitals or with the main Hospital in Addis Ababa. In Ethiopia, there are 5 - 9 radiologists for almost 60 million people. There are 21 radiological centres, so specialists must travel from centre to centre to examine the patients.

Objectives are :

• to improve access to health care for people in remote areas of Ethiopia;
• to organise telemedicine demonstrations to show the possibilities and benefits of telemedicine applications such as teleradiology, ultrasound and laboratory information to doctors, specialists, government, the Ministry of Health and Ethiopian Telecom; also, to demonstrate successful collaboration between the participants;
• to initiate new, high quality project proposals based on the needs of Ethiopia;
• to initiate and co-ordinate the telemedicine project in Ethiopia with other international development programmes such as COPINE in East Africa;
• to make available European expertise to the developing world, and to identify the best practice, using the lowest cost, most appropriate equipment, software and services.

Background

The project will take place in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Tigray has a total of six hospitals with 640 beds. These hospitals are responsible to the Ministry of Health (MOH ). Tigray also has 18 health centres with 220 beds (Ministry of Health ) and 142 health stations (132 MOH and 8 others).

The project will include a teleradiology application. The medical and communications equipment will be installed in one or two local clinics in Tigray region.

Two configurations are envisaged. The first is to connect one health clinic with the Black Lion hospital in Addis Ababa. The second is to connect a doctor travelling from village to village with the Region Hospital in Tigray. The Inmarsat system will be used to provide communications between the rural areas and the Tigray hospital.

Demonstration

At the telemedicine stand at the WTDC, Bilton intends to make a video presentation of the telemedicine project in Ethiopia. The video will include images from the remote areas of Ethiopia with a graphic presentation of the telemedicine via Inmarsat satellite.

Partners

The co-ordinators will be Jaroslav Liska (Bilton), Masfin Haile (Ethiopian Telecom) and Dr. Milliard (Ministry of Health in Ethiopia).

BILTON contact :