ICT and public health

Access to basic health-care services in Nigeria remains an uphill task. While this is sufficiently worrying, it is even made worse by the apparent lack of health awareness among the populace, which has been partly responsible for why Nigerians continue to die daily of treatable illnesses.

A major contributor to the problem is the yawning gap between patients and health personnel in the country. Nigeria’s medical personnel-to-patient ratio falls far below the World Health Organisation’s recommendation. As at 2013, Nigeria’s doctor-to-patient ratio was 1:6,400 as against the WHO standard of 1:600. The WHO recommends a nurse-to-patient ratio of 1:700, but the total number of registered nurses in Nigeria is less than 150,000, according to the Open Journal of Nursing 2014.

And the gap may continue to widen. According to a report, medical schools in the country graduate between 2,500 and 4,000 doctors annually, which is rather too low for a country with a population of over 170 million. Worse still, more than 40 percent of doctors who train locally go overseas to practice after graduation because of better remuneration and better working environment.

The challenges are huge, no doubt. But experts say one way to close the public health awareness gap is through the adoption of Information Communications Technology. Using ICT, they argue, public health awareness could be facilitated in a rather effective manner in order to reduce the number of lives lost daily as a result of ignorance.

Indeed, in other sectors of the economy where there has been a dramatic rise in the adoption of ICT in the past few years, the impact has been tremendous. ICT has facilitated cross-industry linkages, efficiency and productivity, making the banking, oil and gas, and manufacturing. The same,
they say, can be replicated in the health sector.

It is perhaps in response to this that CureChat Ltd, in September, launched the CureChat App, which aims to foster strong communication between doctors and the people. The CureChat App, which runs across a whole range of mobile devices guaranteeing optimal performance, certainly creates a platform through which patients can directly chat with doctors on their smartphones to be educated on health matters. It also gives patients the opportunity to communicate confidently with health professionals while also fostering boldness to eventually and, most importantly, visit a hospital.
Furthermore, according to the developers of the App, users can directly chat with consultants, locate hospitals nearby, chat with experienced users who have recovered from similar ailments, and also learn about various sicknesses, identify causes, symptoms and prevention methods. The App also provides a promising means to break silence among patients and the health-conscious in the target group by allowing anonymous chat in which they can openly discuss their doubts and health challenges with doctors.

We commend this innovation. We believe it will go a long way, essentially because many Nigerians today have easier access to the internet and new technology than in the past. Both the young and old are seemingly in love with their smartphones and clearly show a higher tendency to use new technology to gain access to information and seek professional advice.

However, more can be done. For instance, if the CureChat App is compatible only on Apple and Android devices, what happens to numerous other Nigerians who do no have access to such devices? This, then, is a challenge to CureChat Ltd and others in the health sector to come up with a more inclusive App so that the aim of expanding public health awareness in the country could be realised.