A GP based near Brecon has recently returned from a project designed to support healthcare delivery in Zambia.
Dr Daniel Grace led the Livingstone Revisited Expedition, which took place across three weeks in September.
Dr Grace is Medical Director of The Virtual Doctors, which supports frontline healthcare in rural Africa.
The charity uses technology to connect health workers in isolated health centres, currently in rural Zambia and Malawi, with doctors, who support them with diagnosing patient symptoms.
The Livingstone Revisited Expedition was a multidisciplinary project that linked telemedicine, historical adventure and education to explore some of the challenges in accessing healthcare in Zambia.
Working alongside the Ministry of Health, their 3,500km journey onboarded new clinics to the Virtual Doctors telemedicine platform whilst also provided solar lighting and charging capabilities to rural health posts.
Arriving in Lusaka in September, the team set off up the Great North Road, past the corridor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Chitambo. The hospital in Chitambo was founded by the descendants of David Livingstone, and this was the site of the first trauma training session. This session was a learning experience for all, and the team heard first-hand about the challenges in managing road traffic collisions and animal attacks with often limited resources and equipment. They ran similar trauma training sessions in three different provinces and have plans to develop online resources and further extend this project across Zambia.
Over the course of the journey, the project distributed solar lanterns to help support the Ministry of Health in delivering sustainable energy to clinics. These lanterns will help clinicians and wards combat the challenges posed by power rationing.
The project worked closely with in-country partners Snake Safety Zambia and On Call Africa to host a snakebite training session deep in rural Zimba. This session targeted a mixture of community volunteers and healthcare workers and will be particularly valuable as Zambia heads into the rainy season when there is often a surge in snakebite cases.
Over the three weeks of the expedition the team visited 20 healthcare facilities, ranging from district hospitals to rural clinics, and 68 new clinicians were onboarded onto the Virtual Doctors platform.
In recognition of the expedition, Dr Grace was awarded the O’Hea Explorer award by the Scientific Exploration Society at an event at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
“The expedition was not just about retracing Livingstone’s historic journey, it was about leveraging that historical narrative to catalyse meaningful change in healthcare delivery and empower rural communities,” said Dr Grace.
“The Virtual Doctors have worked collaboratively with the Zambian Ministry of Health for over 17 years, and now supports over 300 clinicians throughout Zambia. Visiting some of the facilities we support has allowed us to re-engage with clinicians, better understand the challenges that they face on a daily basis and develop new and exciting projects that will continue to have a lasting impact on healthcare delivery within Zambia. Importantly, we work with a core Zambian team and Zambian stakeholders and it is really important for us that our project is and remains sustainable.”
Dr Grace added: ”We are always keen to invite new volunteer doctors to join our team, especially if you have experience of working in Sub-Saharan Africa or similar low-resource settings. We are looking to expand our team and are looking for GPs and hospital-based specialists. We are also developing a pilot scheme involving nurses, midwives and physios so if you work in one of these roles and have an interest in global health, please also get in touch via our website www.virtualdoctors.org “