By Our Correspondent
Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Information and Communications recently hosted a regional consultative meeting on how information and communication technology could be used to save lives with particular reference to diseases like the murderous Ebola virus disease.
The event, according to an Information Ministry source, was organized by the International Telecommunications Union and supported by the governments of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea; three countries in the West African sub-region that have been ravaged by the disease.
The meeting, according to the Ministry of Information, "provided a platform for sharing information on the Ebola affected countries and officially adopted a strategy to use Big Data and call data records before, during and after the outbreak of epidemics and diseases such as Ebola."
Addressing the meeting, Sierra Leone’s president Ernest Bai Koroma expressed his government’s gratitude to the government of Japan for its technical assistance on this project and the ITU for launching the Big Data project in Sierra Leone as a pilot project."
Information Minister Alpha Kanu said the government of Sierra Leone "is committed to providing the means by which ICT applications and solutions are available to its citizens at affordable costs."
" It is also an obligation on the part of the government of Sierra Leone to provide the enabling regulatory environment that will enhance the growth of the sector and promotion of digital literacy. ITU is already working on a Big Data pilot project that involves Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Shortly after the recent outbreak of the Ebola disease, ITU donated satellite communications systems to Sierra Leone to provide connectivity in rural areas, " he added.
Comments