Building Healthy Connections

ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau has been asked to lead a project that will link African and Arab national telemedicine projects into the Afro-Arab Telemedicine Network. The goal is to establish a multi-country telemedicine network that will extend medical services to those who would otherwise not receive it. The telemedicine network will allow professionals to share resources and knowledge in order to prevent and treat common diseases in the region.

Initially, the network will support remote consultations in radiology and pathology as well as distance training and education. Depending upon the state of the infrastructure in each country, the facilities will include:

• Connections for high-speed transmission enabling online consultation
• Distance learning, on-the-job training and education
• ISDN circuits and analogue lines of 28, 34, and 56 kbit/s
• Internet connections for file transfer and data acquisition and satellite connections for remote areas with no access to basic phone services.

In addition, ITU is active in telemedicine initiatives in Ethiopia, Georgia, Guinea, Malta, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe.