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| Thousands of heart patients in Ivory Coast are checked by telemedicine each year (AFP Photo/DAVID ESNAULT) |
Bouaké (Ivory Coast) (AFP) - Every time Catherine Coulibaly's 19-year-old son had to make a routine appointment with the cardiologist for his heart condition, she gritted her teeth as she silently counted the financial cost.
It wasn't
just the hospital fee -- there was the transport, food and accommodation, too,
all of it amounting to a hefty burden for an Ivorian family on a modest income.
But thanks
to telemedicine -- consultations that doctors conduct through the internet or
by phone -- this cost is now a fading memory.
Her son can
book an appointment at a telemedicine facility in a nearby town in northern
Ivory Coast.
There, he
is attached to monitoring machines which send the data sent to Bouake
University Hospital in the centre of the country, where it is scrutinised by a
heart doctor.
The
fledgling technology has long been championed by health advocates for poor
rural economies.
Ivory Coast
has become an African testbed for it, thanks to a project linking the Bouake
hospital's cardiac department with health centres in several northern towns,
some of which are a four-hour drive away.
Telemedicine
"caused a sigh of relief for the population of Bouake, Boundiali, Korhogo,
everyone," says Auguste Dosso, president of the "Little Heart"
association, which helps families with cardiac health issues.
Some 45
percent of the Ivorian population live below the poverty line, according to the
World Bank's latest estimate in 2017. And the minimum monthly wage -- not
always respected -- is only around $100, or 90 euros.
Heart
disease surging
The pioneer
behind the scheme is cardiologist Florent Diby, who set up an association
called Wake Up Africa.
In Ivory
Coast, heart disease, diabetes and other "lifestyle" ailments are
surging, Diby explained.
"Urbanisation is making people more sedentary, and there's the rise in tobacco consumption, changes in diet, stress," Diby said.
 |
Cardiac
specialists are rare in Ivory Coast -- patients can spend much of their
income
in transport and accommodation when they need a consultation
(AFP Photo/DAVID
ESNAULT)
|
"Urbanisation is making people more sedentary, and there's the rise in tobacco consumption, changes in diet, stress," Diby said.
Three
decades ago, only around one in eight of the Ivorian population had high blood
pressure -- now the figure is one in four, on a par with parts of Western
Europe.
But in
Ivory Coast -- and across Africa -- well-equipped cardiology units are rare.
"Ninety
percent of heart attacks can be diagnosed by telemedicine, so for us
cardiologists it's a revolutionary technology," said Diby.
The beauty
of the telemedicine scheme is that neither the doctor nor the patient has to
travel far.
The cardiac
patient is hooked up to the electrocardiogram (ECG) and other diagnostic
machines with the help of a technician in a local health centre, which is
connected to a computer in Bouake's University Hospital.
The
cardiologist there can then see the results in real time, provide a diagnosis
and prescribe treatment.
The
five-year-old project has already linked 10 health centres to the seven
cardiologists at Bouake, enabling 4,800 patients in other towns to receive
consultations by telemedicine each year. The goal is to expand this to 20
sites, doubling the intake.
Expertise
France, the French public agency for international technical assistance,
subsidises up to 185,000 euros of the network, which pays for equipment such as
computers, artificial intelligence software and internet connections.
Diby is now
calling for telemedicine to be expanded in other medical fields such as
neurology and psychiatry, not just in the Ivory Coast, but across West Africa
too.
That
opinion is shared by other experts. Sixty percent of Africans live in rural
areas, where shortages of doctors are usually acute.
But
numerous hurdles need to be overcome, especially investment in computers and
access to the internet, according to a 2013 analysis published by the US
National Library of Medicine.
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