Rural Tsilitwa residents stunned by CSIR tele-medicine project

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by Stan Mzimba

QUMBU -- "We are going through hard times these days. Even those who were disadvantaged say it was not like this during the apartheid days," said Health MEC Bevan Goqwana at the Makhenkesi Stofile Technical College this week.

Goqwana was speaking at a two-pronged function: to congratulate college principal Mzimkulu Jikijela for being nominated for the Community Builder of the Year award by the community of Tsilitwa here, and to attend a demonstration by the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) consortium of its tele-medicine project.

"Those who are disadvantaged want to take the current changes back to apartheid days and there are those who do not want to see what is happening."

Goqwana said there was a need to appreciate what the CSIR was doing.

"What they have done and still want to do, especially here, is something they wanted to do long before 1994.

"But the laws of the land at the time made it difficult for them to do so."

CSIR projects leader Chris Morris told the audience that his establishment had a vision of creating integrated developments for rural areas. These would feature business skills, among other things.

The function began with a demonstration on how the tele-medicine project works and how it will aid the community serviced mainly by community clinics.

Stunned members of the audience heard that patients could be diagnosed by a doctor thousands of kilometres away.

The doctor would study
e-mailed photographs of the patients taken by the clinic staff.

Morris said the CSIR was successful in being awarded funding by the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology for the project, which is entitled "Information communication technologies for rural development".

He said community members who have so far been identified for training include 25 teachers, the local clinic sister and 12 entrepreneurs.

"These members in turn will become trainers of other community members themselves.

"Business plans which have been identified include a bakery, an auto workshop as well as marketing this service centre by producing letter heads, business cards, CVs and so on," Morris said.

Jikijela told the local community packing the hall here that the project had promoted partnerships with the clusters of schools in and around Tsilitwa.

"It has had a positive effect on student enrolment because now students can access PCs," he said.

Jikijela said that, once communication facilities had been established in the centre, links would be made to other facilities such as schools and clinics.

This would provide the opportunity for running distance education and tele-health projects.