Help 150 South African Nurses Treat AIDS

Summary

Provide 150 nurses in Port Elizabeth, South Africa with mobile, digitized libraries of essential medical information for treating HIV-infected and AIDS patients at the point of care.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

The most important resources in the world today are information and knowledge. Even with technologies which have brought this wealth to many, medical information is not allocated equitably. Nurses, the frontline healthcare providers in South Africa, do not have access to the Internet or to medical reference materials. To provide all Port Elizabeth Health Complex nurses with reliable, relevant, and up-to-date information, we need to purchase 150 handheld computers and train nurses to use them.

How will this project solve this problem?

We will deploy the 150 mobile computers with a library of medical information related to diagnosing and treating HIV/AIDS patients. Nurses will be trained to use the devices and apply the information in their work with patients at the point of care.

Potential Long Term Impact

The project will provide 150 nurses with vital medical information needed to diagnose and treat an estimated 126,000 HIV/AIDS patients in Port Elizabeth and build the capacity of nurses and other hosptial staff to use information technology.

Project Message

Health workers in the developing world are starved of the information that is the lifeblood of effective health care.
- James Grant, Former Executive Director of UNICEF

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).

Resources