Robert Gumede donates R4 million’s state-of-the-art Covid-19 equipment

The Robert Gumede Keni Foundation and Gijima have donated state-of-the-art Covid-19 health equipment worth over R4 million to the Department of Health. The donation included temperature monitors, facial recognition and security metal detector scanners. Officially handing these over to the MEC for health, Sasekani Manzini, on Tuesday, the Robert Gumede Keni Foundation’s Dr Portia Gumede said the 4IR smart Covid-19 scanners will help eliminate queues and assist in identifying high-risk patients with symptoms on time.

  Read: Covid-19: Mpumalanga nearing 500 deaths “The scanners will remain useful as they can still be used post-Covid-19. The hospitals will always need temperature detectors. The smart scanners will also help eliminate fraudulent civil claims against the Department of Health,” said Gumede. The 4IR smart Covid-19 scanners will be placed at entrances and used as a walk-through body detectors to detect high temperatures, age, gender and whether the person is wearing a mask or not. This artificial intelligence technology was developed by Gijima and a Chinese global digital technology company, Hikvision. “An alarm goes off if high temperatures are registered as an early warning system. This helps the hospitals and clinics to help lessen the number of people entering their premises who might potentially have the virus, from being in contact with other patients,” continued Gumede. Just a few weeks ago, the foundation and Gijima donated 300 laptops worth more than R1,5 million to students at the University of Mpumalanga. Also read: Standard Bank donates PPEs to Mpumalanga municipalities to assist in the battle against Covid-19 “The foundation and Gijima plan to avail more funds in order to help develop more scanners and to donate more of them to other public hospitals and clinics across South Africa. “And as the country moves into lockdown level 1, the need for artificial intelligence and 4IR grows exponentially and requires immediate attention. “Gijima plans on investing more in developing solutions that will assist the country and the world with continuing with life safely in this era of the new normal.” Manzini, who has criss-crossed the province in the fight to disrupt the spread of the virus, said the fight to keep all health facilities safe remains government’s priority. “As we welcome the donated items, I would like to stress the importance of keeping our public healthcare facilities safe and free of viruses. These items will help us a great deal as the battle to stop the spread of Covid-19 continues,” said Manzini.