Return to Main Menu

MUSC's health connection to Western Sahara by Dick Peterson Public Relations The call from the Digestive Disease Center office to The Catalyst hooked me. It was to observe a telemedicine communication to a refugee camp in Western Sahara.  I could only imagine what this would one day become. It could be the first thread in what will eventually become a bridge to Western Sahara—a telecommunications link that transports MUSC specialists to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in every way but their physical presence. I wondered if “Beam me up, Scotty,” will ever be a part of this. On the MUSC side of the Atlantic were cardiologist Michael E. Assey, M.D., and radiologist Josh Farber, M.D., with Digestive Disease Center director and gastroenterologist Peter B. Cotton, M.D. They were talking to images on a computer monitor set on a table in front of them.  The people in the monitor screen moved slowly. Then the computer blinked and put them where they should be—almost like intermittent strobe lights keeping track of action in a dark room. On the North African side of the ocean at a refugee camp in Algeria, a small group of physicians and others peered into a computer monitor and watched images of Assey, Farber and Cotton as they described what they saw in an electrocardiogram and X-rays of patients in the refugee camp. The X-rays, one of a patient’s chest and another of a foot, and the electrocardiogram had been sent ahead electronically. This was a test—an experiment, the people in Western Sahara called it. They wanted to see if it could be done, and see what problems might arise.  I wondered if this could be to telemedicine what Alexander Graham Bell’s “Watson—come here—I want you” was to the telephone. No doubt someday this will be called “primitive,” but today it’s high tech. The contact was tenuous and the images jerky, but the collaboration gelled a camaraderie among physicians an ocean apart.  Here’s what they wrote and sent by e-mail:  “On behalf of us all, the physicians of Western Sahara, we would like to express to you personally and to the Medical University of South Carolina, our thanks and tell you how grateful we are in establishing this connection, and our desire to continue these contacts for diagnosis purposes and exchange of knowledge.” This connection might one day be the thread that a life in a remote part of the world could cling to. Eight physicians signed the note. It was an exciting time for them. The connection gives them a chance to keep current in their profession. But best of all, it gives them another tool in their practice of medicine with which to mend bodies and save lives. Of particular concern are the children, said MUSC’s David Gangemi, Ph.D., who was on the Western Sahara end of the telemedicine link during the transmission. Gangemi is associated with the National Nutraceutical Center, a collaborative research project of MUSC and Clemson University and a part of the South Carolina Research Authority. The children suffer from malnutrition, a condition called coeliac disease, that presents as a bloated abdomen. Their diet lacks many of the nutrients needed to digest complex carbohydrates, Gangemi said. It’s a result of the harsh, wilderness existence they and their families have been forced into. For about 20 years now the Saharawi people have been contained in refugee camps in Algeria just across the border from their homeland in Western Sahara, south of Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean. Once a Spanish colony, the area destabilized when Spain  relinquished control, leaving the oil and mineral rich area vulnerable to Morocco, which re-colonized it. “They’re a proud, independent and democratic society,”Gangemi said. He added that Saharawi women have a powerful voice in the welfare of the camps, an unusual status for women among Muslim peoples. It was into this artificially enforced refugee culture that Cotton, Assey, and Farber caught just a glimpse that day. The telecommunication link they participated in is part of an effort by the National Nutraceutical Center and a sponsoring company, 21st Century Nutraceuticals, to help with the health care needs of the Saharawi.  Cotton’s group, MUSC’s Digestive Disease Center, will be determining the nutritional needs of the children and pregnant women especially, Gangemi said. And it was through the center’s telemedicine facilities that the initial communication link was made. “Our delegation to Western Sahara brought the communication equipment —satellite phones, scanners, computers—technology from Peter Cotton’s group that we would need to transmit back to the Digestive Disease Center,” Gangemi said. “You should have seen the faces of the physicians there in that room when they saw the three doctors back here at MUSC. They lit up brighter than the desert sun. This was their connection with modern medicine.” Gangemi said that the Utah-based 21st Century Nutraceuticals includes humanitarian efforts as part of its company’s mission and wants to be recognized in Europe as a company that helps others. MUSC’s interest in the project is to establish an ability to extend telemedical care into remote regions of the world. Future funding from the World Health Organization or some other agency is a real possibility, Gangemi said. My imagination again: Is it too far a reach to think a specialist here could guide a surgeon there through an operation, given the ability to “see” what’s being done and direct the procedure? What about robotics put to a surgical application? Couldn’t a surgeon here operate controls that transmit signals to a “robotic surgeon” there, one that could “see,” “hear,” “touch,” and perform on command? I’m told it’s already being done.