Theresa Shikuku, 51, had been to all major hospitals in Kenya during her illness. She'd even sent a tissue sample to South Africa for tests. The results confirmed liposarcoma – a malignancy of fat cells in her abdomen. There was no treatment regime.  Her death was just one of the 18,000 people who die annually because of cancer, according to the Committee on Health at the Kenya's Parliament, in February 2011.

Kenya has only five oncologists in public hospitals and these cancer specialists are supposed to cater for the bulk of more than 80,000 new cases of cancer reported every year.

Remote surgery

However if groundbreaking telesurgery carried out at the Aga Khan University Hospital takes root in the country, the hope for cancer patients may be at hand.

In a first-of-a-kind live demonstration in Kenya, the private hospital showed that telesurgery (also called remote surgery) is possible in Kenya.

With the technical expertise of top companies in provision of medical equipment (Asterisk Kenya), high-speed telecommunication equipment (Sight and Sound Limited) and high-speed broadband connections (Access Kenya), plus the state-of-the-art operating theater at the Aga Khan University Hospital, a team of surgeons witnessed a "live" operation.

The surgeons had assembled in Nairobi's Crowne Plaza Hotel for a three-day conference under the auspices of the Panafrican Urological Surgeons Association. They watched as a urology specialist in South Africa consulted with the doctors in the operating theater during the procedure. It was a major success.

Ethical questions

According to The Business Daily, a Kenyan publication which broke the story, "the technology brings together cutting edge IT, medical and broadcasting technologies to harness complex input from almost every medical field regardless of location or time zone to a single operating room."

Telesurgery is just one in the whole basket of possibilities that will definitely make a huge difference on the continent, but that's dependent on high-speed connectivity, availability of proper facilities and awareness of life-saving prospects of this new practice.

Herbert Murayi, a medical doctor practicing in Nairobi, said the technology was welcome because it had the potential of making the country achieve its dream of health care for all.

"It [telesurgery] is a culture, which like all good things take time to be appreciated. But once it takes root, it will be unstoppable," Murayi told ChinAfrica.

But according to him, there are crucial issues that have to be addressed to allow telesurgery and other forms of telemedicine to be accepted. Most of these have to do with a "social consensus" on who will take responsibility for the patient should anything go wrong.

There's also an element of "professional jealousy," where the few professionals in various profitable specialized fields, may be forced to share those profits and patients with "foreign consultants." This, Murayi said, is a typical trend in any shift to new technology, "because people think their jobs will be taken away from them."