About 4.5 million people mainly from the Xhosa tribe live in this area. The main town, Umtata has a population of about 120 thousand. Within this region there are 139 health care facilities ranging from rural clinics to one academic hospital. In Transkei one clinic, usually manned by nurses, serves on average 14.000 people and one community hospital for 133.000. Poor infrastructure, lack of tarmac roads, doctors, transport, communication and security remain serious problems in Transkei.
Health services rely mainly on referral system.
The main aim of the project was to develop a low cost, off-line electronic communication network for use in South African health services systems. In each of these provinces steering committees have been established composed of representatives from the health providers, academic institutions, communities and NGOs for project implementation. The pilot project, after linking up the steering committee members in April 1995, is now completed. Healthlink deployed on each site a 486 PC, a 14400-baud modem and dot matrix printer. Healthlink personnel perform training in node operation, computing and e-mail.