Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond.
COVID-19
Scale-up
Sub-Saharan Africa
Telehealth
Telemedicine
Journal
Smart health (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
ISSN: 2352-6483
Titre abrégé: Smart Health (Amst)
Pays: Netherlands
ID NLM: 101706213
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Jul 2021
Jul 2021
Historique:
received:
18
01
2021
revised:
24
04
2021
accepted:
01
07
2021
entrez:
26
12
2022
pubmed:
1
7
2021
medline:
1
7
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in adoption and implementation of mitigatory policies, including movement restrictions (lockdowns) to curb its spread. These lockdowns have brought unintended consequences such as increasing the inequalities in health delivery. In the context of these restrictions, telemedicine provides an opportunity for continuation of essential health care provision. This review aimed to map available literature on the current status of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa to proffer recommendations for scale up during COVID-19 and beyond. Our review highlighted the lack of meaningful investment in the area. The literature identified resistance to telemedicine, infrastructural barriers, and the lack of policy and budgetary support as main deterrents to current implementation. We recommend the region to leverage on the rapid expansion of internet and telecommunication in addition to adopting a mix of strategies to set up an infrastructure for providing scale up of telemedicine and overcome barriers to implementation. There is an urgent need for policy formulation and the provision of budgetary support through sustainable business models.
Identifiants
pubmed: 36570120
doi: 10.1016/j.smhl.2021.100207
pii: S2352-6483(21)00029-5
pmc: PMC9757988
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Review
Langues
eng
Pagination
100207Informations de copyright
© 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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