Uganda, April 3 -- When Dr. Davis Musinguzi and his four colleagues launched Rocket Health, a telemedicine and digital health service, in November 2012, the initial goal was to operate a 24-hour call center to provide mobile phone consultations for patients.

Within the first six months, it is said that around 7,000 people had used the service. But seven years later, the market was not growing at satisfactory levels.

The challenges were a combination of factors including limited internet access, limited exposure to modern technology and low literacy rates among the targeted users.

However, in a moment of unexpected luck, the Covid-19 pandemic struck at the tail end of 2019.

And in March 2020, the government instituted lockdowns where p...