Together We Stand

[ 115 ] Image: SES Friendship Bangladesh is deploying SATMED on three hospital ships to make health-care services accessible to those living in hard-to-reach areas Sierra Leone In late 2014, when the Ebola epidemic had reached its peak, the Luxembourg Government and German Doctors, a German NGO, agreed to deploy a SATMED communication terminal to the Serabu hospital in Sierra Leone, 52 kilometres from the town of Bo. The Ebola epidemic had severe repercussions on the services provided by the hospital, which were further exacerbated by major communication problems. The hospital in Serabu provides quality health care for a population of up to 70,000 and became a major sanctuary during the epidemic. The deployment aimed to set up a permanent communication terminal at the hospital and to provide its personnel with stable and reliable means of communication with the outside world by using satellite capacities made available by SES. This meant that German Doctors could build up a direct connection with partner hospitals whose specialists for infectious diseases could provide live diagnoses and therapeutic options for patients. Thanks to SATMED, German Doctors was able to create a stable Internet connection with the management of the hospi- tal as well as with the medical staff and the trainers of the maternal care unit. Through regular Skype calls, the NGO was involved in the daily business of the hospital and bottlenecks in the communication lines could be minimized. The implementation of the immediate relief programmes in the framework of the Ebola response in the area would not have been possible without this equipment. Decisions regarding coordina- tion and procurement had to be taken without delay. Also, the SATMED kit helped create access to national websites providing the most accurate information regarding the occurrence of new Ebola cases in the vicinity of the hospital, thus ensuring timely and effective responses. This also allowed the hospital manage- ment to improve the security of its patients and staff. SATMED will remain operational in the Serabu hospital after the Ebola crisis. Bangladesh Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities in the world and has always been exposed to natural hazards such as cyclones and floods. Due to the complex geography in remote areas, basic medical infrastructure and primary health-care provision are lacking. For this reason Friendship Bangladesh decided in 2015 to further develop its activities in making health-care services accessible to those living in remote and hard-to-reach areas. With the deployment of the SATMED platformon Friendship’s three hospital ships in Bangladesh, the different applications available will open up new possibilities to the NGO’s medical and paramedical teams which work in areas otherwise devoid of Internet connectivity. SATMED will enable the transmission of medical imagery, remote consultation support, the intercon- nection of the presently fragmented management information systems of the different hospitals, and the centralization of patient files as well as virtual training classrooms. According to Friendship, SATMED should not be under- stood as a new technological tool which, in itself, will secure access to health-care services for the least privileged. What SATMED makes possible is the improvement and optimi- zation of health services which are delivered in a difficult T ogether W e S tand