Basic Course held in Gertrudes’ Children Hospital in Nairobi – 20 to 24 November 2016

 

22 surgeons of 8 different countries among whom 4 Somalian surgeons participated in the workshop organized by the Association 2nd Chance and the COSECSA in Gertrudes ‘ Of Children Hospital in Nairobi in Kenya.

The theoretical and practical teaching was made in a very constructive atmosphere. The coherence in terms of basic pathologies allowed a real increase of the knowledge to those who more needed it. This was also validated by the improvement of the theoretical test at the end of the week.

The theoretical lectures were in perfect concordance with the pathologies operated in operating blocks.

All the participants had the opportunity to participate actively in the complete care of the patient (operating indication, surgical operation, operating comment, and visit to operated patients). Participants organised in pairs allowed each to work serenely and in a constructive way.

To avoid the chaos in operating room, the group was divided into 2. Wednesday group 1 operated and groups 2 watched the movies of surgical operations produced by 2nd Chance followed with interactive discussions.

In the operating theatre, each pair was overseen by an experimented African surgeon Dr Edward Wayi (Dar es Salaam) and Dr Kevin Nkudi Kusewini (Harare) on each of 2 available tables. All the interventions were realised by the participants in a spirit of surgical trade guilds. Dr Ali Modarressi and Dr Nicolas Balagué from the HUG (Geneva) organised and oversaw the work of the operations by taking notes of the performed skills by participants in dealing with hygiene, with operating strategy and attitude towards to the patients.

The participants returned in their respective countries after a theoretical evaluation of their skills acquired on the presented basic techniques and the debriefing of the two operating days. Feedbacks insisted upon “take home message”, the most frequent faults and the corrective actions to be brought to them.