BY GABRIEL OLAWALE

The Lagos State health sector is set  to receive a technological boost in tracking medical issues more effectively.  Revealing this during a courtesy visit to the Lagos State Ministry of Health, the President, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and African countries, Novartis, Dr. Rainer Boehm said the programme tagged “eHealth For Africa”  would improve access to quality medicines for all patients and help healthcare providers learn more about  the management of deadly infectious diseases.

The initiative, which is a new tablet computer-based solution will serve as a training tool for healthcare providers and help in reporting the medical stock level in their various healthcare centre and disease surveillance.

Boehm added that the  eHealth for Africa  originated from “SMS for Life”, an initiative of Roll Back Malaria and Novartis introduced in Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, DRC and Cameroon as of improving access to essential antimalarial in rural area through mobile phone-based system.

“Introduction of this new technology in all public health facilities, will provide a two-way system of stock identification and disease surveillance data, together with training in disease management for healthcare professionals.

“Also online timely information on the stock levels of 18 critical medical products and 16 disease surveillance indicators covering multiple disease areas including malaria, HIV, measles, yellow fever and cholera will be reported and this will help in ensuring that only essential antimalarial treatments and other critical medicines are available where and when needed.

The project is expected to cover PHC  facilities in the 20 Local Government Areas in Lagos State between July 2014 and March 2015 as a first phase. It will focus on bringing online visibility to stock levels of test kits and medicines for malaria and the prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission of HIV,  enhancing the stock level visibility of routine childhood vaccines; ensuring weekly epidemic tracking of 7 critical diseases; and providing high quality training for health workers via tablet computers.”

Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris said: “Through eHealth For Africa, we look forward to improving access to quality medicines for all patients in Lagos and by extension Nigeria; as well as helping our own healthcare teams to learn more about the management of deadly infectious diseases.”