Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The world is, however, rapidly moving away
from the desktop and laptop Web paradigms to-
wards the mobile Web paradigm, where mobile,
smart devices such as the smart phone, pocket PC,
PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), hybrid devices
(such as phone-enabled PDAs or Pocket PCs), and
wearable computers will become powerful enough
to replace laptop computers (Kondratova, 2004).
The continuous rise in the usage of mobile
phones in Africa (Countries and Consumers,
2007; ITU, 2006) and the advance in their capa-
bility provide a more accessible means of making
healthcare services available to a vast majority of
the people in this part of the world. This paper
presents a mobile phone-based disease diagnosis
system that patients can use to diagnose their ail-
ments and which can also be used by physicians
and community health officers (CHO) as decision
support system for the diagnosis of their patients'
ailments. This provides a more readily available
means to obtain healthcare services in comparison
with the use of computers which are not readily
available in Africa and other developing nations,
and which some people are disadvantaged at us-
ing because of economic reasons or computer
illiteracy.
manageable diseases (Masimba, 2007). Today, the
public health security of all countries depends on
the capacity of each to act effectively and contrib-
ute to the security of all. Currently, the doctor per
patient ratio in Africa is appalling. For example,
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with
a population of 57 million (roughly equivalent to
the populations of the United Kingdom, France
and Italy), has only 5,827 doctors compared with
France's 203,000, Italy's 241,000 and the UK's
160,000. Cuba with a population of about 11
million, has roughly the same population as Ma-
lawi, Zambia or Zimbabwe. But Cuba has 66,567
doctors compared with Malawi's 266, Zambia's
1,264 and Zimbabwe's 2,086. Not surprisingly,
Cuba has roughly the same life expectancy (77
years) as developed countries while the aver-
age life expectancy for these African countries
is 37 to 40 years (Masimba, 2007). Nigeria has
an estimated population of 140 million and the
ratio of doctors to the population is about 1 to
3,333 (Florence et al., 2007). According to the
World Health Organization (WHO) 2010 report,
in Nigeria, current life expectancy is 49 years.
The density of physicians per 10, 000 popula-
tion is 4, that of dentistry is.5, 16 for nurses and
midwives, and 1 for pharmaceutical personnel.
The most common causes of death, in rank order
are as follows: Malaria, diarrhea, other diseases,
pneumonia, prematurity, birth asphyxia, neonatal
sepsis, HIV/Aids, congenital abnormalities and
injuries. In Nigeria, people die of minor illnesses
that could have been prevented with simple medi-
cations and healthy lifestyles (Acho, 2005). The
situation is not peculiar to Nigeria but typical of
developing nations.
The use of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) is, however, steadily grow-
ing in the developing countries of the world and
more and more people are taking advantage of the
benefits it brings. The number of mobile phone
users in Africa continues to rise steeply, making
the continent an alluring target for both network
BACKGROUND
The World Health Organization (WHO) 2000
report defines a health system to include all the
activities whose primary purpose is to promote,
restore or maintain health. It embraces all the goods
and services designed to promote health, including
preventive, curative and palliative interventions,
whether directed to individuals or to population
(WHO, 2000). According to the WHO report 2007,
Africa has the highest verified events of potential
international public health concern. Imagine four
African countries without any living soul - Bo-
tswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland - all
because of deaths to preventable, treatable and
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