And following John's comments, there is something going on in South
Africa which I feel might justify some scrutiny here - if only as an
example of co-ordinated thinking, involving health and transport - and
information.

I refer to the Phelophepa Health Train, which runs all over the rural
areas of S.A. delivering a range of front line health care services to
rural communities. The history is that it was set up by Transnet (the
South African state owned railway network) as part of their Corporate
Social Responsibility Programme, linked to the Rand Afrikaans
University who were looking for a way to set up mobile optometry
clinics. It started in 1990 and now has a 16 or 17 car train with
clinics offering optometry, dentistry, general health, pyschology
clinics and HIV/Aids and other counselling. It also provide training
for locally based health workers, and it is staffed mostly by final
year and pg students.

I will not go into the full story here. Suffice to say that it is a
good example of:
a) using joined up thinking to meet an identified need which would
otherwise be left unmet;
b) using information intelligently about customer needs to determine
the type of and locations for those services - and fvor future planning
of routes, services to be offered, staffing etc;
c) using the existence of 4 defined entities to deliver the service -
ie known rural communities; a railway network (underused);
pre-identified health needs of the customers in each location;
provision of information to customers in advance about the arrival and
location of the train;

Oh yes, and it was conceived by and is not managed by health
professionals - it was set up and is run by a librarian! - Dr Lynette
Coetzee, who was/is a librarian working for the railway company.

Phelophepa? It means "good clean health" in an amalgam of local
languages.

This was reported in the Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion
of Health (page 105, volume 124 no 3, May 2004) (page 159, volume 124
no 4, July 2004) website = www.rsph.org

For those of our readers who might want to know the full story,
information is available from the train's website at: www.mhc.org.za

Brian R Layzell MBCS CITP; MIHM; MRSH
Treasurer
Developing Countries Specialist Group
British Computer Society
tel: +44(0)1206 794008
fax: +44(0)870 0516658
email: [log in to unmask]

On Thursday, Nov 4, 2004, at 09:45 Europe/London, John Lindsay wrote:

> I was reminded yesterday at the agm of the bcs of the value of being
> able to
> tell stories and accounts of differences that make a difference in the
> development context.... Particularly when you meet people in
> government who
> have the capacity to allocate resources to projects...
>
> When I do projects or attend meetings, I try to report them here... It
> would
> be good to have more stories of things people are working on, or know
> about
> :)
>
>
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>
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