International Telecommunication Union
Resolution n° 7
Telemedicine in Africa

The African Regional Telecommunication Development Conference (AF-RTDC-96)
(Abidjan 6-10 May 1996)

recalling

1. Recommendation 1 from the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) in Buenos Aires, March 1994, which focused on the application of telecommunication to health and other social services;
2. that the WTDC approved the establishment of two new Study Groups in the ITU's Development Sector and agreed a set of Questions for study by each of the two Groups and that one of those questions concerned telemedicine and health care;
3. that Study Group 2 which was entrusted with Question 6 to define the technologies most suitable for telemedicine's efficient dissemination to developing countries, studying the costs and benefits of different solutions, fostering the adoption of global standards and producing a telemedicine handbook;
4. that the European Commission concluded a project under Third Framework Programme in 1994 which was called EpiAim which analysed the use of health informatics and telematics in Africa and Latin America and which was carried out in co-operation with the World Health Organisation;
5. that the G-7 Information Society Ministerial Conference held in Brussels in February 1995 established 11 joint pilot projects, one of which is on health care, with the objective of helping to create direct communication networks based on common standards; that the health care project has six sub-projects, one of which is aimed at improving health care co-operation and another of which is aimed at a Global Emergency Telemedicine Service,

considering

1. that few African countries have any experience in the application of telemedicine, even in urban areas equipped with telecommunication infrastructures;
2. that there is, nevertheless, an overwhelming need for the provision of medical and health care services, especially in areas outside the cities;
3. that the provision of health care consumes a large portion of national budgets;
4. that there is a substantial experience and expertise with regard to telemedicine in developed countries such as Europe, Canada, the United States and Japan;
5. that global satellite networks such as those provided by Inmarsat and Intelsat have already been used for the delivery of telemedicine services to remote and rural areas;
6. that most African countries are members of these organisations and in RASCOM are in place earth stations which could be used for such delivery,

recognising

1. that African countries cannot afford the very sophisticated telemedicine solutions involving ATM, virtual reality, etc., and that their most pressing need is for relatively unsophisticated, off-the-shelf, thin-route and low cost telemedicine applications;
2. that telemedicine services and delivery in Africa should be affordable, practical, profitable, self-sustaining and available to as many people in need as possible;
3. that telemedicine services could be an economical means of achieving national health policy objectives with regard to improvement and/or extension of medical and health care, especially to non-urban areas;
4. that there have been many demonstrations of telemedicine but virtually no projects to trials sufficiently large in scope to lead to sustainable services;
5. that it would be desirable to see two large scale trials of telemedicine somewhere in Africa which would serve as "test beds" and, this Conference hopes, as models for the successful implementation of telemedicine in Africa,

recommends

1. that telemedicine and telehealth care merit serious study by telecommunication and health administrations in Africa;
2. that African countries should support any initiatives which help gain them practical experience in telemedicine and telehealth;
3. that African telecom organisations should discuss the utility, logistics and feasibility of telemedicine delivery especially in remote and rural areas of their countries;
4. that there should be at least one expert on telemedicine in each of the telecom and health ministries,

invites

requests

1. the Director of the BDT to ask the European Commission and other appropriate funding bodies to support and fund two large scale telemedicine trials, involving say 500 "sites" (especially including doctors and paramedics who travel from village to village) in two different countries of Africa;
2. the BDT to collaborate with the European Commission and other partners in organising, monitoring and analysing the results of such large scale trials,

further requests

appeals

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