IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unm/unumer/2011002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Telemedicine and primary health: The virtual doctor project Zambia

Author

Listed:
  • Mupela, Evans

    (UNU-MERIT)

  • Mustarde, Paul

    (Virtual Development UK)

  • Jones, Huw

    (Virtual Development UK)

Abstract

This paper is a commentary on a project application of telemedicine to alleviate primary health care problems in Lundazi district in the Eastern province of Zambia. The project dubbed 'The Virtual Doctor Project' will use hard body vehicles fitted with satellite communication devices and modern medical equipment to deliver primary health care services to some of the neediest areas of the country. The relevance and importance of the project lies in the fact that these areas are hard-to-reach due to rugged natural terrain and have very limited telecommunications infrastructure. The lack of these and other basic services makes it difficult for medical personnel to settle in these areas, which leads to an acute shortage of medical personnel. The paper presents this problem and how it is addressed by 'The Virtual Doctor Project', emphasizing that while the telemedicine concept is not new in sub-Saharan Africa, the combination of mobility and connectivity to service a number of villages 'on the go' is an important variation in the shift back to the 1978 Alma Ata principles of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO). This overview of the Virtual Doctor Project in Zambia provides insight into both the potential for ICT, and the problems and limitations that any 'real-world' articulation of this technology must confront.

Suggested Citation

  • Mupela, Evans & Mustarde, Paul & Jones, Huw, 2011. "Telemedicine and primary health: The virtual doctor project Zambia," MERIT Working Papers 2011-002, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
  • Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2011002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2011/wp2011-002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Telemedicine; Satellite; Primary health; Alma Ata;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O25 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Industrial Policy
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2011002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ad Notten (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/meritnl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.