Our AMHSI workstream in Sierra Leone continues to thrive. Nearly 130 mesh hernia repairs have now been carried out with excellent results to date. Both our established centres are working well, with no reported issues. We thank the teams for their hard work and commitment in providing high quality healthcare in these resource limited environments – something that is difficult to fully appreciate without experiencing the reality.
We are absolutely delighted to report that a third centre has now been recruited and successfully inducted into the programme. The City Garden Clinic in Makeni. This is particularly noteworthy as there remain significant challenges to be faced in Sierra Leone (click to read more). Centres have to have the necessary baseline infrastructure and meet required standards before proceeding with formal recruitment into this particular project. When dealing with a prosthesis (the mesh), it is imperative that such operations are only conducted in appropriate environments, otherwise significant issues will arise. As the scope of this project continues to grow in Sierra Leone, we are working hard with other interested parties to help realise these thresholds.
This time, Lesley travelled back out as a solo UK faculty. She linked up with Abbot (the Salone Project Lead), once again forming a bipartisan faculty which is rapidly growing in strength and experience. This is particularly pleasing for us as it very much aligns with our vision to enable local independence. Not only at an ‘individual centre providing a service’ level, but ultimately as an increasingly independent workstream able to self-train and self-expand. The steps we are making towards this in Sierra Leone are fantastic.
They were welcomed by the team in Makeni and enjoyed a very successful programme including classroom based ‘chalk and talk’, novel simulation of operative technique, other practical sessions to learn about mesh preparation and sterilisation, as well as the all important live operating. Thank you Dr Abdul Sesay, Yusuf Kanu and all the team for embracing us and working with us to help improve surgical care going forwards.
