24 August, Haiphong – In the context of the India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) Fund project An E-learning Approach to Health, an expert team from the Apollo Hospitals Network in India with specialized expertise in the set-up and management of tele-medicine programmes visited Haiphong University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Viet Nam to establish the grounds for collaboration. The team consisted of Prof.K.Ganapathy, President of the Apollo Telemedicine Foundation and S. PremAnand, Vice President of Programme Development.
“At the Apollo Network of 65 hospitals and centers of excellence, we have perfected the practice of tele-medicine, and enabled its reach to remote areas of India, as well some of our neighboring countries. We have provided provide tele-health services to 400,000 people in India and other countries in South Asia in the last 17 years, and continue to expand our support for partners to run their own tele-health services”– said Dr. Ganapathy. “In the spirit of South-South cooperation we look forward to supporting Viet Nam as they explore how best to deploy a tele-health system that improves the coverage and quality of their medical care.” – added Mr. PremAnand.
“Besides the support we are currently getting from IBSA to develop our e-learning programme so as to reinforce the knowledge and capacities of health professionals in the northern coastal region of Viet Nam, we are very interested in acquiring technical expertise on how to design and roll-out tele-health systems, as we believe this is an area with much potential to help us overcome capacity gaps among health care professionals in remote areas of Viet Nam, thereby improving the health of thousands of Vietnamese.” –commented Professor Nguyen Van Hung, M.D., Ph.D, Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Haiphong University.
The IBSA project in Viet Nam is implemented in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health, which were also key partners supporting this technical exchange with Indian experts.