Internet connects rural Nepal to ‘telemedics’
NEPAL: Patients in rural Nepal will soon be able to consult
specialist doctors over the Internet as part of an innovative scheme to
improve health care in remote areas of the Himalayan country.
Over the next few weeks, the government will begin connecting 25
district hospitals, most of them located in the rugged and inaccessible
Himalayas, to specialist consultants in the capital Kathmandu using
satellite technology.
The 30-million-rupee (400,000-dollar) project is the first of its
kind in Nepal, where millions of people live in small communities with
no road connections and several days’ walk from the nearest hospital.
The scheme is the brainchild of doctor Mingmar Sherpa, who for 24
years ran the main hospital in the Everest region in eastern Nepal,
where he experienced at first hand the difficulties faced by health
practitioners in rural areas.
“Most people in Nepal live in remote villages where harsh weather
conditions and geography make access to healthcare difficult,” said
Sherpa, 56, now director of logistics at the health ministry in
Kathmandu.
“It’s very hard to get specialists into those districts — mostly they
want to remain in the city, or even go abroad to work. Even getting
skilled birthing attendants to work in such places has proved a
challenge,” he told AFP.
“So the health ministry decided it was worth trying telemedecine,
which is already quite advanced in other South Asian countries such as
India.”
Impoverished Nepal has made significant progress in health care in
recent years, reducing maternal and child mortality rates and increasing
life expectancy.
In 2007 the government endorsed health care as a basic human right in
the constitution, introducing a policy of free treatment for the poorest
and most vulnerable.
But development agencies say nearly one in four people in Nepal still
has no access to even basic health care.
Sherpa came up with the idea of introducing telemedecine five years
ago, but at that time, Internet connectivity in Nepal was still too weak
for the scheme to work.
Now, under his supervision, the health ministry has set up high-speed
Internet connections in 25 hospitals, using satellite technology to
provide sufficient bandwidth for videoconferencing.
Local doctors will log their patients’ notes online along with any
x-ray or ultrasound images and lab tests, ready to be examined by
specialists in Kathmandu — a system known as “store and forward”.
Kathmandu, Wednesday, AFP
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