Apollo Hospitals, Airtel Africa, bring remote healthcare access to Africa

Thursday, July 14, 2016
News
Apollo Hospitals is the largest healthcare group from India and Airtel Africa is one of the bigger mobile operators on the African continent. Both parties have signed a MoU in order to enhance healthcare cooperation across Africa. The MoU focusses on enabling easy access to Apollo specialists. The service will enable Airtel Africa subscribers to access personalised advice in real time, thereby ‘bringing world-class healthcare services at their fingertips’.

India receives a lot of patients from Africa for medical treatment. Apollo Hospitals says it has realized that some African patients traveling to India remain misguided about their health condition which could instead be treated in Africa. A few other patients wait far too long for treatment to reach a stage where cure is no longer possible. With this in mind, Apollo Hospitals has partnered with Airtel Africa to enhance access to world-class healthcare services to the people of Africa.

Under the agreement Airtel Africa will provide customers with discounted consultation and enable easy payment options through Airtel Money or the customers Airtime.  Also, Apollo Hospitals and Airtel Africa will launch ‘Ask-Apollo’, a web & mobile enabled patient-centric service, which combines the expertise of world-renowned Apollo doctors, with the convenience of consulting them at any time, from anywhere around the world.

The easy-to-use platform will allow users to talk to doctors, face-to-face through video conferencing, or connect with them via voice or email, thus saving the time, money and energy of patients anywhere. One can also upload clinical information including reports, images and scans, to be analyzed by Apollo experts, who can then provide an opinion within a stipulated time.

Airtel has African operations for mobile Communications and mobile payments in: Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The Apollo Hospitals Group operates 9215 beds across 64 hospitals. It provides integrated healthcare in Asia, with group companies that specialize in insurance, pharmacy, consultancy, clinics, helping over 45 million patients from 121 countries.