Who are the Virtual Doctors?
We are a UK-based charity operating in Zambia & Malawi. We use a simple Smartphone App to connect rural health centres, where there no doctors, with over 230 volunteer Doctors, based predominantly in the UK.
The volunteer doctors offer advice to diagnose conditions, treat patients and prescribe medicine. This assists and empowers rural health workers, and even helps saves lives. The App also reduces the number of hospital referrals that would incur long, arduous journeys and unmanageable expense for very poor patients.
Our mission
Help rural health workers treat more patients in their own communities, supporting a reduction in morbidity and mortality rates
Reduce unnecessary referrals to distant & hard to reach hospitals
Enhance knowledge transfer between medical professionals
Our aim
To help improve the local primary healthcare in some of the most remote and impoverished areas of sub-Saharan Africa. We believe this model could be adopted across Africa, making a significant impact on healthcare throughout the region and beyond. We are already developing a parallel service as a pilot to support primary health care in the community in the UK.
The Model
Our highly accessible and user-friendly software, in the form of an App loaded onto a Smartphone, links health workers in rural clinics to volunteer doctors. We provide training from the outset as well as sustained medical and technical support, education and feedback.
Our impact
We have equipped healthcare workers in more than 240 health facilities right across Zambia and also Malawi with our telemedicine App-loaded Smartphones. More are being set up in a rolling expansion programme funded entirely through the generosity of our supporters. We have also equipped a further 6 rural Health Centres in Malawi. These facilities serve as many as 3.5 million people with no direct access to a qualified doctor. Recent survey results show that using the Virtual Doctors service:
Improved a patient’s symptoms in 92% of cases
Prevented the need for a hospital referral in 78% of cases
Provided an educational benefit in 97% of cases
Our Status
We have the appropriate operating Memorandum of Understanding/s with the Zambian Ministry of Health. The Virtual Doctors governance is overseen by an active Board of Trustees in the UK and Zambia. In Zambia we have in-country setting as a charitable company with local trustees and five full-time Zambian staff members.
Our Resourcing
100% of our funding currently comes via the generosity of the general public. Lack of funding can prove a barrier to working so we are continually seeking new support. We currently have a very small team, comprising one full time Executive and two part time staff members in the UK. Much of our core operation is supported by volunteers.
the Virtual Doctors receives no government funding whatsoever and all our money comes from the amazing support of our donors, which allows us:
To provide an emergency lifeline in critical healthcare situations, in areas where there are no doctors
To help health workers treat more patients in their own communities.
To prevent unnecessary and potentially fatal referrals to distant hospitals.
To improve the skills and knowledge of rural health workers (so that they can deal with complex patient cases the next time they present).
Thanks to people like you, our service has handled over 8000 patient cases to date, many of them life saving.