Problem Statement

Throughout many African countries, there are no emergency phone numbers, ambulances, effective response strategies for large-scale emergencies, or functional hospital EDs. Emergency medical situations from car accidents to public health outbreaks can strike any person or community at any time. Health threats caused by emergencies are on the rise. By using infrastructure already in place, EDs in Africa have great and imminent potential to serve as a nexus for high-functioning health systems. EDs provide a “front door” to hospitals’ inpatient and outpatient franchises. They can operate as training sites for skilled workforces, integrate with primary care, extend scarce community resources, provide a social safety net and stand ready as first responders to epidemics and disasters.This potential is stymied because few ED clinicians are specialty trained. When a patient comes in having hit their head, the injury may be treated while the underlying cause – perhaps dizziness, fainting or domestic violence – goes undiagnosed. Emergency clinicians ask why this event happened.Africa’s health systems can leverage new technologies that are increasingly commonplace in developed countries. Africa’s hospitals and EDs still lack: failsafe digital identification; digital payments and other financial services (e.g., remittances); rudimentary digital information systems; and standardized business best practices. Revolutionary breakthroughs in low-cost diagnostics (e.g., ultrasound) and therapies stall out — even though EDs may have the equipment — for lack of training, funding and functioning infrastructure. In many cases, useful equipment goes unused because there is no budget to maintain it. That means patients aren’t properly diagnosed.