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Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond
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 restrictio...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9757988/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36570120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.smhl.2021.100207 |
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author | Chitungo, Itai Mhango, Malizgani Dzobo, Mathias Denhere, Knowledge Chimene, Munashe Musuka, Godfrey Dzinamarira, Tafadzwa |
author_facet | Chitungo, Itai Mhango, Malizgani Dzobo, Mathias Denhere, Knowledge Chimene, Munashe Musuka, Godfrey Dzinamarira, Tafadzwa |
author_sort | Chitungo, Itai |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9757988 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-97579882022-12-19 Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond Chitungo, Itai Mhango, Malizgani Dzobo, Mathias Denhere, Knowledge Chimene, Munashe Musuka, Godfrey Dzinamarira, Tafadzwa Smart Health (Amst) Article 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. Elsevier Inc. 2021-07 2021-07-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9757988/ /pubmed/36570120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.smhl.2021.100207 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Chitungo, Itai Mhango, Malizgani Dzobo, Mathias Denhere, Knowledge Chimene, Munashe Musuka, Godfrey Dzinamarira, Tafadzwa Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond |
title | Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond |
title_full | Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond |
title_fullStr | Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond |
title_full_unstemmed | Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond |
title_short | Towards virtual doctor consultations: A call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond |
title_sort | towards virtual doctor consultations: a call for the scale-up of telemedicine in sub-saharan africa during covid-19 lockdowns and beyond |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9757988/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36570120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.smhl.2021.100207 |
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