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| David Ibhawoh, Intel Nigeria BDM |
Apparently trying to address some of the challenges facing the nation in healthcare, one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, Intel Corporation, has flagged off an electronic health, eHealth, programme in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja.
The company said the effort was to strengthen its corporate social responsibility efforts. It was actually made possible after a working visit by its Chairman, Mr. Craig Barrett in 2007.
However, in early 2009, the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory Millennium Development Goals Unit (FCTMDGU), health officials, and Intel Corporation began discussing ways that Information and Communication Technology (ICT), could be used to improve health and healthcare delivery in rural areas.
According to the Business Development Manager, Intel Nigeria, Mr. David Ibhawoh, the company observed after the visit that a large percentage of the people in the country do not have access to health and also where there were any they lacked the specialist, especially dermatologists.
So, Intel, decided to take healthcare to the communities through mobile health, mHealth, and telemedicine, which eventually, gave birth to the Mailafiya Health Programme.
He said there were consultations with the chiefs so as to allay their fears and design an intervention programme that is most suitable for them.
According to him, “workshops were held with various stakeholders including internal stakeholders, such as Ministry of Health and FCT officials and external stakeholders, such as village tribal leaders and participating hardware and software vendors. This helped to build stakeholders’ commitment and ensure that the mobile teams would be understood and accepted in the communities they are deployed to. The programme also carried out public workshops using traditional village messengers and pre-site visits by doctors to educate and familiarize rural residents with the programme.
In a presentation entitled; “Mobile Primary Health Care Initiative, Mailafiya, Nigeria: Delivering Health Care Services to the Rural Dwellers and Indigent Poor”, the MDG Coordinator, Federal Capital Territory, Isa Ari, said FCTMDGU, on its part, was committed to pursuing improvements in Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
Ari said, “we knew that we had challenges in meeting the Millennium Development Goals 4, 5, and 6. Even collecting baseline data was difficult. So we asked our team, how can we innovate to achieve these goals? The resulting Mailafiya Health Programme is a complete health delivery service using ICT that can reach the poor effectively. Even in the pilot phase, the programme is reaching 336 communities,” he said.
Mailafiya, which translates as Giver of Health, is a strategic programme that harnesses ICT to increase access to health services for rural and under-served urban populations in surrounding districts
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