Irish medical charity hopes to put itself out of business

Friday, 02 December 2011 12:11

Written by Niamh Griffin

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A wheelchair made from a deck-chair, cardboard plaster casts and sedatives only available to wealthy patients. These are just some of the challenges for surgeons working in East, Central and Southern Africa according to Dr Jean O’ Sullivan.

Dr. O’Sullivan, consultant in accident and emergency medicine at Tallaght hospital in Dublin, says a road accident in Ireland might be attended by 15 medical staff where only one person could be available in rural Kenya.

“You can have one person dealing with an overwhelming situation. So something we would think is easy to fix like a ruptured liver or fracture becomes impossible. There are so few doctors an intern could be the only doctor in a country hospital,” she says.

Responding to the need for more staff, Dr O’Sullivan founded Global Emergency Care Skills (GECS) to provide training for doctors and nurses in developing countries in 2008.

Initially working in Kenya, the charity now partners with the College of Surgeons in East, Central and Southern Africa (COSECSA) and the World Health Organisation to run courses in Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia as well.

“In rural areas they don’t have to staff to teach courses, so the learning is more book-based. We run practical week-long courses, modified to suit each area. We try to make the courses local - if a hospital doesn’t have a CAT scan there’s no point teaching about its uses,” Dr O’ Sullivan says.

The partnership with COSECSA is the most important part of their work says Dr O’ Sullivan as this ensures the courses meet local needs and avoid being what she calls “adventure medicine”. She says a lack of co-ordination between foreign agencies can result in two groups coming to a small hospital in the same week and competing for attention.

Doctors from Ireland and Australia volunteered on the most recent GECS course in Muhumbili National hospital in Dar es Salam, Tanzania using teaching equipment donated by Irish hospitals.

“Once most doctors there finish college they are sent out to work, their book knowledge is amazing and then our teaching that we do is very practical, hands-on skills,” Dr O’Sullivan says.

One Kenyan doctor who attended the first course now runs training sessions in her hospital in Nairobi, something which the Irish volunteers hope will continue to happen says Dr O’Sullivan.

“The whole point is that ideally the people there will run the courses eventually, we will try to do ourselves out of a job.”