Under the treat-and-teach programme that provides telemedicine techniques to medical doctors of the East Africa University Hospital in Somalia, Adel Al-Ansary, professor of intensive care medicine at Ain Shams University, said, “Somalia is the beginning; it is a very promising programme and we are planning to expand our cooperation with several African countries.”

Earlier this year, with the financial support of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the Telemedicine Unit of the Faculty of Medicine at Ain Shams University launched the first-ever intensive care unit in the hospital of East Africa University.

“It was a breakthrough in providing medical care for the residents of Puntland, Somalia,” said Al-Ansary, head of the treat-and-teach programme. 

Two times a week, a group of Somali doctors check in online for their lectures offered by a group of selected professors from Ain Shams University. For the rest of the week, these doctors, along with Muhyadin Hassan, director of the East Africa Hospital, follow up on cases admitted to the new ICU since its launch earlier this year, he explained.

 “We do a normal round that one would do at the ICU of any hospital; we check on each case by examining progress and complications and revisiting the course of treatment; we listen thoroughly to offer advice and wait for the feedback,” Al-Ansary said.

“It should not be long — we hope — when those dedicated physicians at the East Africa University Hospital will be able to run the show on their own,” he added.

According to Al-Ansary, the training programme would last for 16 months, during which exchanges of medical visits will be done on a conservative scale because the idea is to benefit from the telemedicine techniques.

“Telemedicine is the future and that’s why we decided to sponsor the launch of this particular ICU and online programme in cooperation with the Telemedicine Unit of Ain Shams University,” said Sameh Hussien, lead technical cooperation specialist at the Islamic Development Bank.

 “It proved very purposeful; today, it is part of the future of medicine all over the world and we decided that Africa deserves to benefit from this new technology,” Hussein noted.

He added that the programme is pioneering given being based on a cross-global south cooperation — with no competition with possible programmes for north-south cooperation when needed, with Somalia being a good start.

 As for Hassan, he said the new ICU of the East Africa University Hospital is currently providing a much-needed medical service for around 700,000 Somalis. Without this service, the chances of saving many lives would have been slim, if not absent.

This programme cost over $1 million, covering equipment. This amount was pushed by the Islamic Development Bank, covering around 75 percent of the total budget. Ain Shams University and East Africa University shared the rest.

According to Tamer Emara, head of the international cooperation programme at the faculty of medicine of Ain Shams University and chair of its telemedicine unit, Ain Shams University is very committed to the programme and is keen to reach out to as many partners across Africa as possible.

Ain Shams University, he said, is looking into improving and diversifying the funding models to reach out to as many people across the global south as possible.

“South-south medical cooperation is the future, simply because medical solutions for southern countries are much more compatible to share and implement; this is why Egypt has been expanding its medical cooperation with China over the past few years,” Al-Ansary said. He added that Yemen is atop the list for future cooperation.