The 10-year anniversary conference of the Global Anaesthesia, Surgery and Obstetric Collaboration (GASOC) was held in Glasgow this year (24-25th October). It was another excellent and well run event that brought together an international audience both in person and remotely. We were delighted to continue to support this event with Lesley attending in person and Anthony Abbot Kamara (our SWIFTSS lead in Sierra Leone) joining and presenting remotely.
It was great to showcase a number of aspects of SWIFTSS work. We are delighted to report that Anthony Abbot won the prize for best abstract from an LMIC, presenting: Inguinal Mesh Hernia in Sierra Leone: complications rates are comparable to high income countries in plenary session. The work was well received, with many audience members applauding the excellent results he has obtained and asking when the full paper will be published.
The SWIFTSS ultra-low-cost hernia simulation training model was presented by Mohammad Akhter Rahman who works with Lesley at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. We are very grateful to him for all his hard work in writing this up, presenting it, and helping to prepare and refine some of the materials. This presentation represents the formal launch of this exciting, innovative training tool (more to follow on that in due course). When asked by the audience as to whether these materials would be behind a paywall; the answer that everything is to be made freely available was met with surprise and pleasure.
Well done GASOC, Anthony Abbot, Mohammad and Lesley. Excellent work all round!