Ethiopia was the first country to participate in the Indian taxpayer-funded project, which was called the Pan-African e-Network, and Nigeria is scheduled to go online in June. The project, costing more than $100 million, aims to connect universities and hospitals of all 53 countries of the African Union with Indian counterparts for telemedicine and tele-education activities. The network uses video conferencing and Voice over Internet Protocol services (such as Skype) for communication. Students and teachers at Addis Ababa University and Haramaya University in Alemaya, Ethiopia, have been working via satellite with the New Delhi-based Indira Gandhi National Open University since Ethiopia’s $2.12 million pilot project was launched in Addis Ababa in July 2007. The first intake of distance learning students will graduate in June.
Ethiopia’s Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa and the rural Nekempte Hospital are also consulting with Indian heart specialists at the CARE Hospital in Hyderabad and the Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital chain. Doctors in Ethiopia can transmit digitized X-rays, electrocardiograms (ECG), ultrasound scans, and other test results. Satellite ground stations are being installed at universities and hospitals in Cameroon, Egypt, Malawi, and Niger. Botswana, Burundi, Djibouti, Mozambique and Uganda are scheduled to join the network later this year, with the Comoros islands, Cote D’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia following by the end of 2009.
Joanna Nwosu, the program officer for the Nigerian Academy of Science, warned that the e-network’s main challenge might be the lack of equipment for diagnosis and constant power cuts. However, Akin Osibogun, the chief medical director at Lagos University teaching hospital, said an Indian technical team is in Nigeria to train local technical staff to run the system and uninterrupted power supply equipment has already been installed.
(Source: Sunday Monitor, Uganda)