By: Kemo Kanyi
The Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital on Friday integrated an application into its Haemophiliapatient treatment.
Called the Seytu Haemophilia, the application seeks to help treat patients with the disease.
The Head of Surgical Department at the EFSTH, Dr. Cherno S. Jallow, said The Gambia was the fifth country in Africa to have the application, saying the application has been launched in Senegal, Kenya, Ivory Coast, and South Africa.
“We are launching this app in collaboration with the Motherhood, Haemophilia Foundation-The Gambia and the Novo Nordisk Haemophilia Foundation,” he explained.
The Chief Medical Director (CMD) of EFSTH, Dr. Al jafari, described the launch of the Haemophilia App as a development for the Gambia’s health system.
The CMD explained that whenever the hospital received patients with Haemophilia, it had torecommend overseas treatment.
“Since we announced the launching of this project, so many patients with this disease, have already contacted us. This shows how important the application is for the Gambia’s health system,” he explained.
An expert from Senegal Awa Sarr said the development of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbotwill help facilitate data collection, general knowledge, access to care, and treatment levels of patients.
“It will further facilitate the creation and training of speech-text models. The follow-up stages will be dissemination and advocacy campaigns, results evaluation, adoption, and impact study on improvement of the knowledge gained,” she stated.
The launch was followed by the treatment of threeHaemophilia patients.
Haemophila is an inheritable bleeding disorder in which the blood does not clot easily. This affects mostly males and is characterized by bleeding into the joint, into the skin, spontaneously, after surgery, and so on and it can be life-threatening if not managed properly.
