Press Release: Airtel Africa and Apollo Hospitals brings expert healthcare to Africa

Apollo Hospitals, the largest healthcare group from India, and Airtel Africa, a leading telecom operator with operations in 16 countries in Africa including Zambia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance healthcare cooperation across Africa.

The MoU is focused on enabling easy access to Apollo specialists. The MoU was signed by Ms. Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals Group, who is in Nairobi as a leading member of the Indian Business delegation accompanying the Prime Minister of India to Kenya, and Raghunath Mandava, the Chief Operating Officer for Airtel Africa.

This service will enable Airtel Africa subscribers access personalized advice in real time thereby bringing world-class healthcare services at their fingertips.

Airtel Africa will provide its customers with discounted consultation and enable easy payment options through Airtel Money or the customers Airtime. India currently receives a lot of patients from Africa for medical treatment.

Apollo Hospitals has realized that some of the African patients traveling to India remain misguided about their health condition which could instead be treated in Africa while a few other patients wait far too long for treatment to reach a stage where cure is no longer possible. Keeping the above in mind, Apollo Hospitals is now partnering with Airtel Africa to enhance access to world-class healthcare services to the people of Africa.

Apollo Hospitals and Airtel Africa will launch “Ask-Apollo”; a simple and reliable service from a professional medical team at Apollo Hospitals. Ask Apollo is a web & mobile enabled patient-centric service, which combines the expertise of world-renowned Apollo doctors, with the convenience of consulting them at any time, from anywhere around the world. This easy-to-use platform allows one to talk to doctors, face-to-face through video conferencing, or connect with them via voice or email, thus saving the time, money and energy of patients anywhere. One can also upload clinical information including reports, images and scans, to be analyzed by Apollo experts, who can then provide an opinion within a stipulated time.

With patient centricity at the core, Apollo Hospitals has been a forerunner of integrated healthcare in Asia, as well as globally. Apollo Hospitals is widely recognized as the pioneer of private healthcare in India with a network of 64 hospitals, 2,200 retail pharmacy stores, 100 primary care & diagnostic clinics, health insurance services, clinical research division and 15 academic institutions including a medical school. Apollo Hospitals has been working very closely with Africa in healthcare sector for more than 15 years. Every year, thousands of patients from across Africa suffer from the rising problem of lifestyle diseases like heart ailments, kidney failure and cancer. With Apollo’s vast experience in managing these diseases (more than 160,000 heart surgeries and over 14,000 kidney transplants), it is one of the most preferred destinations for them to travel for treatment. While Apollo has treated many patients and trained many doctors from Kenya as well, it is now planning to further enhance India’s contribution to Africa’s healthcare services. Apollo Hospitals group is partnering with Airtel Africa to revolutionize the access to healthcare system.

Airtel is the world’s third largest global telecommunications services company (based on subscribers) which operates in 19 countries across Asia and Africa (including Kenya), providing 2G 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line broadband and voice services depending upon the country of operation.