By HOPE BWALYA

INFORMATION and Communication Technology (ICT) has evolved over centuries to address almost all human needs.
The ability of ICT in handling human needs has ranged from education, finance, health and many more.
Zambia, which is part of the global world has benefited in these cyber advancement.
The many intrinsic values of ICT cannot be delved into at once, but handled one at a time in order to appreciate its significance. One of the commendable aspects of ICT is in saving lives.
Recently, Zamtel in conjunction with the Ministry of Community Development, Mother and Child Health and Tele-Doctor launched the radical ‘Call a Doctor’ call centre.
This is giant leap in technology since the centre would enable people to access medical help by just dialing 7100 and voila instant medical service is offered!
Community Development Mother and Child Minister Emerine Kabanshi said the call centre would enable save lives, especially that of women in both rural and urban areas of Zambia.
Ms Kabanshi said the call centre would make it easy for people to access medical advice from specialists as the services where just a finger away from the phone.
Speaking during the launch of the Tele-Doctor Call a Doctor Call centre, Ms Kabanshi said the service would facilitate early identification of diseases which would reduce complications that arise from late detection of diseases, especially for the mothers and children under five years of age.
“This will facilitate early identification of danger signs and quick onward referral to the nearest health center,” she said.
Ms Kabanshi said the call centre will go a long way in alleviating health care challenges that are faced in remote areas of the country and provide an efficient way to reach several people within a short time.
She said the call centre would serve as a means of efficiency for the medical practitioners as well as patients needing medical attention.
Zamtel chief executive officer, Mupanga Mwanakatwe said the e-health service would improve the health service demands in rural communities and urban areas.
Dr Mwanakatwe said the Tele-Doctor service would deliver efficient and cost effective medical services as well as bridge the gap that is currently being faced in the medical sector in Zambia.
“The Tele-Doctor partly fills the gap that we currently have in the delivery of quality health services in Zambia,” he said.
Meanwhile, Tele-Doctor chairperson Willbroad Mutale emphasised that the services were handled by certified medical practitioners and that the call to save a life was only costing K1.20 per minute.
Dr Mutale stated that the doctors where Zambian certified Doctors who knew and understood well the disease environment of the country.
The call centre was the first public private partnership medical call centre in Zambia and was being handled by qualified and certified medical doctors.
Dr Mutale said the call centre would open doors to the continuum of health care and was available 24/7.
He stressed that there was no need for one to have a smart phone to access these services as it only needed connection to a Zamtel mobile network.
The chairperson assured Zambians that Tele-Doctor was not a virtual project but had real life doctors available to render health care services.
He said though the project would not reduce the huge gap between the doctor and patient ration but will surely increase access to a qualified doctor.
“The current doctor patient ratio in Zambia is 1: 23,000 which is five times higher than what WHO recommends for African countries. This number will improve drastically with the introduction of the Tele-Doctor call centre as anyone will have the possibility to talk to a qualified doctor,” he said.
And Zambia Medical Association president Aaron Mujajati said the project was a wonderful innovation as it would help reduce the mortality rates especially in rural Zambia.
“This will help curb the rural mortality rate as well as child mortality especially for those under the age of five years in the country,” he stated.
However, Dr Mujajati expressed concern at the current high number of cyber crimes taking place in the ICT world, as this had the potential to affect the project.
He therefore, appealed to government and the innovators involved to come up with strict legislative policies regarding the confidentiality of patient records.
The coming of this ICT innovation will set people’s hopes high as most people will have medical services in the comfort of their homes and would reduce in queuing up at health centres.