Current Situation

South Africa has one of the highest incidences of Tuberculosis cases in the world (World Health Organization epidemiological report of 31 May 2005). More than 300,000 South Africans suffer from it, despite the treatment of TB being a relatively straightforward 6 month process of adherence to medication.

It is in response to these circumstances that Geo-ICT Health (Pty) Ltd developed the e-MuM solution (electronic Medication usage Monitoring) a valuable tool with potential to benefit the entire developing world.

The e-MuM solution is relevant to any chronic disease requiring that patients take medication on a continuous basis because it is independent of culture or continent, it can radically improve the lives of 40 million HIV/AIDS sufferers, 200 million living with diabetes or hundreds of millions taking daily medication for heart diseases around the world.

TB and HIV/AIDS persist as a global public health crisis of a serious magnitude requiring urgent attention. More than 4.5 million South Africans live with HIV/AIDS. TB is a leading cause of HIV-related morbidity and mortality while HIV is the most important factor fuelling the TB epidemic in high HIV prevalence populations. For HIV/AIDS “ideal adherence” is when a patient takes more than 95% of his or her doses. If a patient takes less than 80% of his/her doses, the treatment is unlikely to be successful. Non-compliance or non-adherence to treatment against TB and HIV/AIDS will result in the developing of resistance against these drugs, increasing the cost of re-treatment by up to 20 times. A person infected by a drug resistant strain will be limited for treatment options just like the person who infected him/her.

e-MuM is designed to journey with the patient from day to day and form a simple part of the control and treatment solution to improve health.

e-MuM offers the following value in addressing the control and treatment of chronic illnesses, especially in developing countries:

  • makes transferral of patient data possible thereby decreasing the number of interruptions due to patient transferral;
  • assists in the monitoring of patient visits by community health workers, thereby creating a means for auditing worker activity;
  • reminds patient about clinic visits;
  • improves data quality and patient statistics on all levels;
  • supports administrative and clinical decision making;
  • decreases the number re-treatment cases;
  • thereby reduces the occurrence of drug resistant and Multi Drug Resistant TB cases.