Virtual Doctors, The

Uses local mobile broadband networks to connect rural clinics with doctors around the world, connecting isolated health centers with volunteer doctors around the world.

We are a UK-based charity operating in Zambia & Malawi. We use a simple Smartphone App to connect rural health centres (where there no doctors) in Zambia and Malawi, with over 230 volunteer Doctors, based predominantly in the UK. The volunteer doctors offer advice to diagnose conditions, treat patients and prescribe medicine. This assists and empowers rural health workers, and even helps saves lives. The App also reduces the number of hospital referrals that would incur long, arduous journeys and unmanageable expense for very poor patients. Our mission is to help rural health workers treat more patients in their own communities, supporting a reduction in morbidity and mortality rates, reduce unnecessary referrals to distant & hard to reach hospitals & enhance knowledge transfer between medical professionals. Our aim is to help improve the local primary healthcare in some of the most remote and impoverished areas of sub-Saharan Africa. We believe this model could be adopted across Africa, making a significant impact on healthcare throughout the region and beyond. We are already developing a parallel service as a pilot to support primary health care in the community in the UK. We have equipped healthcare workers in more than 240 health facilities right across Zambia and also Malawi with our telemedicine App-loaded Smartphones. More are being set up in a rolling expansion programme funded entirely through the generosity of our supporters. We have also equipped a further 6 rural Health Centres in Malawi. These facilities serve as many as 3.5 million people with no direct access to a qualified doctor.