Then and now: Collaboration for neglected tropical disease
Dr. Das (on telehealth device) shares his expertise with local healthcare providers at Filaria and General Hospital. Dr. Hossain is pictured second from right.
Over 30 years ago, two healthcare professionals across the world came together to address the issue of lymphatic filariasis or ‘Filaria’—a neglected tropical disease. They never thought that one day they would work together again, connected by the power of telehealth technology.
Dr. Sakti Das is a urologist who grew up in India with a heart for serving others. He has traveled the world to help patients in need of surgical and urological care, from Niger to Kenya and Mexico. “Just being able to help another human being, this is a tremendous thing… that’s what humanity is about, helping others.” He later moved to California where he was a professor and had a successful Urology practice before retiring. He continues to serve patients around the world through his philanthropic work.
Many years ago, Dr. Das traveled from his home in California to Bangladesh with a team of physicians as part of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) work to eliminate Filaria. Patients with this disease experience extremely painful swelling of the lower extremities that often makes it difficult to walk or work and leads to permanent disability. Those who suffer from Filaria are excluded from society and driven into poverty. Dr. Das and the team from WHO worked to educate local Bangladeshi physicians, medical students, and other healthcare providers on how to treat this devastating disease.
During his time in Bangladesh with WHO, Dr. Das met Professor Dr. Moazzem Hossain, an immunology and medical microbiology expert working towards the same goal. Dr. Hossain served as the Director of Disease Control and Program Manager of Filariasis for the Bangladesh Ministry of Health.
Now over three decades later, Dr. Das and Dr. Hossain are working together again. Dr. Hossain works at the Filaria and General Hospital, which he founded to serve vulnerable patients in Dhaka. Through World Telehealth Initiative’s program at the hospital, Dr. Hossain’s team collaborates with Dr. Das on Filaria cases and offers free telehealth consults to patients in need. There is no urologist at the hospital, so Dr. Das advises on patients who need urological care. They are able to provide filaria patients with much needed relief, increasing their quality of life. The two healthcare professionals live over 7,600 miles apart, Dr. Das in California and Dr. Hossain in Dhaka, but telehealth allows them to work together from the comfort of their offices across the world.
Collaboration of this kind is incredibly impactful for patients in low-resource areas, who don’t have access to the specialized care they need. In order to enable more international collaboration, we recently launched a matching platform. This new tool is an interactive healthcare ecosystem, that connects people, organizations, and resources, so clinicians across the world can support each other and the broader medical community. World Telehealth Initiative looks forward to a future full of growth and continuing to transform global healthcare together.