October update: Latest VDrs visit to Zambia

A month ago, Executive Director Huw Jones returned to Zambia with Trustees Ian Kerr, James Phiri and Ian Clarke as well as Board Secretary Nicola McCahill. The purpose of the visit was to support our beneficiaries as usual, but also to recruit a Full-Time In-Country Project Manager – keep your ears peeled for an announcement in the coming weeks!

As part of their clinics tour, they visited our supported Rural Health Centres (RHC) of Chikupi and Chanyanya (Kafue District), Mount Makulu (Chilanga) and Ngwerere (Chongwe District) – the latter being the turf of Kennedy Mulenga, one of our more prolific Clinical Officers (CO).

Follow this link to our website to view an interview of Kennedy and his experience of the VDrs service.

*Ngwerere RHC's very popular Under-5s Clinic.*

In VDrs service usage news, we have set up a WhatsApp group for first line trouble-shooting; it has already been very successful, introducing a quantum leap in communication with our COs, enabling us to pre-empt issues and improving quality of service and usage.

Our COs have also been enjoying the brand new VDrs Forum where they can exchange with our Virtual Doctors beyond the confines of patient cases.

*Technology Trustee Ian Clarke (with new Nurse Sylvia Bwalya) carrying out some connectivity testing at Chanyanya, where our service/beneficiaries has experienced technical issues.*

Back in the UK

Thank you to the staff and pupils of Lancing College for their hospitality at our "Insight on the Hill" awareness raising event on 20 September.

Guests, staff and Trustees welcomed the Mayor and Mayoress of Worthing; Mr and Mrs Harman were joined by representatives from the Malawi High Commission, Cllr Peter Metcalfe, Sophie Cook and other guests to hear about our work.
It was a very successful and pleasant evening and we were delighted to see so much interest from Lancing College’s budding medics.

We had previously mentioned our upcoming expansion into Malawi. It is becoming a reality and we are thrilled to hold the Launch of our Malawi Appeal on the 31st of October in a prestigious London venue for an exclusive invitation only event. Find out about it next month. We are looking forward to a very exciting 2018!

We want to hear about you, our supporters!

It is very important to us to know more about our audience and improve our communication channels. We would be very grateful if you could take a couple of minutes to answer (anonymously of course) 7 questions about you and your interest in the Virtual Doctors: Take the survey.

Many thanks in advance!

Supporting the Virtual Doctors from the UK

Many thanks to the students of Lancing College who held a bake sale with members of the teaching staff and raised £270, smashing their target of the mere £200 required to equip an African rural health centre with a smart phone and call plan to give them access to our telemedicine service.
Those cakes look amazing – we wish we’d been around to try some!

Executive Director Huw Jones, Fundraising Trustee Ros Bird and her friend Heather Connolly ran the Worthing Seafront 10K Sunday 15 October in support of the Virtual Doctors.

Fundraising really is fun and very rewarding. Join the Virtual Doctor team in raising more to help with the Virtual Doctors work in Africa! If we can do it so can you.

Check out our "Fit and Fund" page on our website - staying healthier to help make other people healthier in Africa! A win-win...

£1 coins old and new

Do you love a copper jar? On 15 October the old £1 coins have become obsolete – why not send them our way to deal with.

About: the Virtual Doctors provides sophisticated, yet easy to use bespoke telemedicine app and smartphones with internet access. This empowers health workers in rural Africa by enabling them to send electronic patient files to volunteer doctors for diagnosis and treatment advice.

We rely on donations to help us save lives in rural Zambia.
Donate on our JustGiving page or on our website

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