The Rwanda Military Hospital (RMH) Kanombe has received new telemedicine equipment from Egypt.

Handed over yesterday by the Egyptian ambassador to Rwanda, Namira Nabil Mohamed Elmahdy Negm, the set of equipment is the second for the hospital which already had such technology in place.

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technology to provide clinical health care from a distance.

According to Dr Jean Paul Bitega, the commandant of the hospital, the system will ease treatment as well as trainings as RMH doctors will be able to easily get advice from their counterparts in different countries on complicated cases.

"A specialist from another country can offer medical advice online. With this technology, you are seeing each other as well as the patient you are treating,” he said.

"It has advanced technology where a doctor performing a surgical operation can get advice from a specialist from a distant place in case he encounters challenges.”

Col. Bitega added that, the equipment will also help the medics to follow trainings carried out in other countries, deliver presentations online as well as ask questions without having to attend physically.

"It is something that solves the distance barrier,” he said.

This is the second system of telemedicine equipment for the hospital, and Bitega said that having two systems will give the hospital an opportunity to train more specialists since the facility is one of the teaching hospitals, alongside University Teaching Hospital of Butare (CHUB) and University Central Hospital of Kigali (CHUK).

"If some students are in one room connecting with specialists from USA, others can be in another speaking with those from elsewhere about different diseases depending on their different specialties since the students we receive here specialise in different things,” he said.

"In addition, the students can follow a surgical operation from outside the theatre, a fact which helps to eliminate the risk of infections if they had to go into the operation room and follow from there.”

Amb. Namira described the development to as "the result of the south to south cooperation within the African continent”

"It will help in cutting the costs of bringing physicians from abroad or sending patients outside of Rwanda, sometimes for cases that look complicated but can be handled here,” she said, adding that Rwanda’s advancements in internet facilities will help a lot in the use of the technology.

According to Amb. Namira, there will be a team of specialised physicians from Cairo University, who will be linking up with their Rwandan counterparts to discuss complicated diagnoses of different diseases.

RMH has been working with American and Indian specialists via telemedicine, as well as local hospitals in CHUK and CHUB.

RMH last week also received 10 dialysis machines, (for a new kidney dialysis unit).

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