What if a smartphone like the one in your pocket could SAVE A LIFE? What if it could help a sick person in rural Zambia or Malawi avoid a long and arduous journey to get badly needed medical support? Well thanks to the Virtual Doctors telemedicine service and those who generously support us, we are helping to make a difference. Our service is already supporting over 85 Clinical Officer users whose Rural Health Clinics cover a patient catchment of over 1.6million people. We have an easily scalable model and by the end of December we will have expanded further. With your help and additional resourcing we could expand to new areas and countries.

Some of the cases received are harrowing. Early intervention advice was likely to have helped save the leg of a teenage boy who, having been bitten by a snake, may otherwise have developed serious complications after being inappropriated treated by a well-intended faith healer. Other cases describe a 20-month-old baby boy with a fishhook hooked through his upper left eyelid, a 20-year old emaciated and dehydrated female (HIV) brought to a clinic in an unconscious state and a 2-year old boy who had drunk some insecticide . There are so many stories like this coming to our Virtual Doctors on a daily basis, and every case is a patient in need.

The Virtual Doctors service is helping to strengthen local healthcare in rural areas. The service harnesses the power of mobile technology to connect isolated health professionals in rural clinics, District Hospitals and Missions. Thanks to over 100 volunteer doctors covering multiple specialisms, (based predominantly in the UK or in-country urban areas) our service has helped medical professional users to diagnose conditions, decide how to treat patients and prescribe available medicines. The service is educating and empowering health professionals in rural and peri-rural areas and encouraging peer-to-peer dialogue.

Will you help us by supporting our Winter Appeal by donating in December and January?

Please make a financial gift or set up a page to raise sponsorship - whatever you can afford in funds or time. £25 will provide bandwidth to access the service for 12 months. £180 will pay for a phone and help train a user. Please give what you can and encourage others to support too. You'll be helping us raise awareness too.

Why not forward this on to others. Fundraise with friends, have a whip round at the office party, or set yourself a new year challenge and set up your own page linked to this campaign and raise sponsorship. All our funding comes through the generosity of people just like you. We need money to buy more phones and train more Clinical Officers and nurses to enable them to help more patients get well.

You can also donate in other ways or sign up for our monthly newsletter on our website www.virtualdoctors.org.

Coming soon... Watch out for our BBC Radio4 Appeal on 19th January 2020