Africa is home to 14% of the world’s population and is encumbered with 24% of the global burden of disease. Yet Africa is served by only 3% of the world’s available health workforce who in turn are resourced by only 1% of the world healthcare expenditure. These are a handful of facts highlighted in Scott and Mars (2015): https://www.dovepress.com/getfile.php?fileID=23551 and little has changed over the past 6 years. The numbers paint a bleak future for health care in Africa unless radical changes are made NOW.
Telehealth (or digital health or telemedicine) has emerged as one of the buzz words around healthcare delivery and health services provision, even more so during the current COVID-19 pandemic. On the surface, telehealth refers to use of audio and video technologies, plus supportive and facilitatory platforms to provide health care. Underneath the surface is an digital practise management system that can facilitate healthcare from anywhere, at anytime for anyone. Incidentally, origins of telehealth can be traced to the goal to provide basic care to underserved populations (Gajarawala and Pelkowski, 2021): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7577680/.