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The US State Department on Friday formed a telemedicine public-private partnership (PPP) in Pakistan to provide and deliver high quality medical services for patients in remote areas, which were otherwise lacking or absent.
Other partners included IBM, Wateen Telecom, Motorola, Medweb, USAID, US Department of Defence Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Centre, Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi, DHQ Hospital, Attock, and Government of Pakistan in addition US Embassy's involvement is critical in project's success. The public-private partnership is using telemedicine to help broaden and strengthen technical capabilities of both the hospitals.
"Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world - a nation of 173 million people," said internationally recognised telemedicine expert and surgeon, Dr Asif Zafar.
"The goal of this project is to highlight technology's ability to overcome a significant healthcare imbalance - more than 75 percent of the population lives in rural areas but only 22 percent of the doctors work there", he added.
In addition to assembling this public-private partnership, the US government contributed 220,000 dollars to purchase state-of-the-art telemedicine equipment and services to execute the project.
The equipment combines an internet-access portal including interactive collaboration tools such as secure email, voice and video conferencing on a secure telemedicine network with advanced medical peripheral devices such as portable ultrasound, digital cameras, EKG, stethoscope and X-ray machines.
Wateen Telecom and Motorola are the first companies in the world to rollout a cutting edge Wimax network on a nation-wide scale. Wimax enables wireless broadband access, allowing the exchange of massive amounts of information between the District Hospital in Attock and Holy Family Hospital. Pakistan Telemedicine project extends the United States-Pakistan strategic partnership, which was formed in 2006.
The broad, long-term partnership of the US and Pakistani governments reinforces the possibility of collaborative projects like this, which has had the opportunity to transform and improve the lives of many Pakistanis. Since 2002 the United States has provided more than 3.4 billion dollars to Pakistan to improve economic growth, education, health, and governance and to assist in earthquake reconstruction.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2008

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