Summary

Program goals

The lack of primary healthcare available to rural communities in many parts of Kenya is in general due to the poor infrastructure of these places. It makes it impossible to retain doctors in villages, who feel that they will become professionally isolated and outdated if stationed in remote areas. In addition to this issue, the common challenges in these regions include geographical isolation of some rural communities which lack of enough health centers (local clinics and regional hospitals) and other related resources. This is compounded by the low income or no income at all for the patients who have poor access to relevant health information and limited medical supplies and services.

Key program components

Medishare Africa is partnering with the Punch to launch the Mobile Telemedicine Clinics Project. The project will utilize email communication via satellite, between Mobile Telemedicine Clinics on the ground and doctors based remotely. This system will allow these doctors to offer on-going diagnostic assistance when required to Kenyan clinic staff, who will travel between a number of local sites in four wheel drive vehicles specifically equipped for the purpose, setting up temporary clinics for several days at a time. The project utilizes modern technology that can cope with challenging environments, to make it possible to offer free doctor–supported primary healthcare to remote, underserved areas of Kenya and eventually other parts of Africa. These consultations are based on text and image clinical documents composed by health workers and are then emailed to physicians. After the pilot project, the aim is to launch other facilities of the same nature to serve other provinces in Kenya in the next five years.