A digital bridge to the Tunisian interior

Deputy Manal Bedida has detailed the expansion of Tunisia’s digital health strategy, which now connects 31 regional hospitals to central specialist hubs. This network facilitates 90 remote imaging examinations daily, addressing the historical lack of medical experts in the country’s inland governorates.

For decades, a geographical injustice has defined Tunisian medicine. With 80 percent of specialists concentrated in coastal regions, patients in the governorates of Kasserine, Tataouine, and Sidi Bouzid often faced weeks of travel for a single consultation. The Ministry of Health’s disclosure to the parliament marks a deliberate effort to dissolve these distances through télé-radiologie and remote specialist clinics.

The technical scaffolding for this transition is managed by the Centre de l’Informatique du Ministère de la Santé (CIMS). Their work ensures that 23 hospitals can now access expertise that was once physically out of reach, having already facilitated 780 medical consultations through the new digital framework. It is a system of care that follows the patient, rather than demanding the patient follow the doctor.

This modernization is accompanied by a change in the very rhythm of the public hospital. A new program introduces additional shifts, operating seven days a week in both morning and evening sessions. These hours are being introduced through a cautious, phased evaluation, ensuring the technology is met by human availability.

The transition rests on an infrastructure of broadband and fiber optics that often follows the same paths as the state’s utility lines. In the flickering blue light of a monitor in a remote clinic, one sees the result of years of legislative preparation and technical labor—a quiet, systematic effort to ensure that the quality of a person’s breath or the clarity of a scan is no longer determined by their proximity to the sea.