Dr Zweli Mkhize and Huawei Chief Executive Officer for South Africa, Spawn Fan were part of the participants at the AI diagnostic and thermal scanning systems
by MTHULISI SIBANDA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – SOUTH Africa is adopting Cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to boost its fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) following a timely donation of high tech solutions by a leading global information and communications technology company.
Huawei has made the donation of four Cloud, Artificial Intelligence diagnostic systems and four thermal scanning systems at the company’s headquarters in Johannesburg .
Dr Zweli Mkhize, the South African Health Minister received the company’s donation.
The AI Cloud solution allows for fast, highly accurate diagnosis of pneumonia by analysing computed tomography (CT) scans of a patients’ lungs.
Spawn Fan, the Huawei South Africa Chief Executive Officer, said early detection helped to reduce the spread of the virus and to flattening the curve.
“Speeding up diagnosis time from hours to minutes with a 98 percent accuracy rate, is a powerful tool for treating, monitoring and management of the disease,” he said.
The solution leverages the Huawei Cloud that was built in South Africa.
This system has been implemented successfully in countries like United Kingdom, Mexico, Thailand and China.
Mkhize said using ICT is another important weapon in the fight against this virus that has infected more than 2 500 people locally, with over 30 deaths.
“We are grateful to Huawei for sharing this innovative system. We look forward to exploring the capabilities of these solutions as we are constantly looking to capacitate our facilities with technology that improves efficiency and accuracy in our health care delivery,” the minister said.
On Tuesday, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Dr Naledi Pandor, also thanked Huawei, along with other Chinese companies and the Chinese government, for their donations and contribution’s to South Africa to aid the COVID-19 response.
Fan said the crisis presented a huge challenge to all humankind in a globalised world, hence the pandemic could no longer be resolved by any individual country.
“Rather, we need to combat the virus by working hand in hand. At this moment, we can’t beat this virus unless we eliminate boundaries to resources and share our know-how and hard-learned lessons,” Fan concluded.
– CAJ News