By Angella Nabwowe

In an effort to improve the delivery of primary health care services to all people, Ethiopia and Uganda as well as several other African countries have adopted information and communication technology (ICT) health initiatives.
In Ethiopia two ICT health initiatives, namely the national telemedicine pilot project and the regional networking project on the health sector are currently rolling in four regions.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) are sponsoring the pilot project.
Fassil Shiferah, coordinator of the Ethiopian Telemedicine project used a case history to illustrate how the sick can get a more accurate diagnosis much quicker, and consequently receive more effective treatment.
She said, “A 14 year-old boy comes to central referral hospital with the complaint of under knee mass. Needle aspiration is taken and sent to pathology department and is seen by a 30 year experienced pathologist and diagnosed to have osteosarcoma (malignant) which needs amputation of the leg to save the boy’s life before the cancer disseminated. The pathologists present the case in the department and they can never reach consensus. Finally to get second opinion it is decided to use “ipath” web based consultation of bone tumor specialist in Basel University (Switzerland). The slide pictures are sent to Basel University and got response from Professor Gernot Jundt. The expert diagnosed that it is a lesion (that) mimics cancer while it is not, and finally the boy is saved from an amputation at an early age.”
Shiferah was presenting a paper on e-health applications at the WSIS Africa regional preparatory conference
While pointing out the enormous benefits of such applications, Shiferah acknowledged that the project does have certain limitations such as a lack of expertise in health information systems, the slow expansion of telecommunication infrastructure and regular power failures.
Ugandan example
Speaking at the same forum, the chairperson of the National e-Health Committee in Uganda, Dr Catherine Omaswa, said conducting health business electronically would improve access and the effectiveness of health care. “Pregnant women more often get labour complications because of the distances they have to travel to access health centres, this is a big problem but could be solved with the use of technology in the health sector,” said Omaswa.
Omaswa lamented that the health indices in Uganda paint a discouraging picture - life expectancy at 43 years and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) at 504 per 1000.
She said that access to health facilities and information is poor especially in rural areas, adding that ICTs are an ideal tool for bridging the gap to overcome the challenges.
Dr. Lawrence Kweku Yamuah of the Aware Home Research Initiative (AHRI) in Ethiopia concurred with his fellow speakers that Least Developing Countries (LDCs) especially in Africa, could benefit from using ICTs to improve health care. “To meet the goals of poverty eradication programmes of many African countries, as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), our socio-economic thinking must tag along with the improvement in the health sector with the e-health/ICT tools,” concluded Kweku.
There are a number of other e-health initiatives being rolled out on the African continent. For instance, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and the US National Library of Medicine have committed over $700 000 to link malaria research centres to the internet.
Uganda, Mozambique, Zambia, Congo Brazzaville and Nigeria were selected to join the first electronic malaria research network in the world.