Global Surgery & Anesthesia
Pre-trauma care: training lay people on basic life support
Hi,
On a recent trip to Pakistan, I had the opportunity to visit a medical school in Karachi. The staff there mentioned that in response to the recent earthquakes in Pakistan, the government was trying to increase the number of ICUs in the country and also offering basic life support training to interested community members to increase local capacity to respond to disasters.
This reminded me of a training program that GPAS of Uganda piloted with policemen and taxi drivers (more info here: http://www.globalpas.org/prehospital). Both seem like a great way to reduce deaths related to trauma by stabilizing patients so that they can receive medical attention.
Are there other programs that are using similar strategies to engage lay-people in pre-hospital/emergency care? Are there resources that could be shared in the community so that others could consider implementing relevant pieces in their programs? Any impact evaluations in the literature on these strategies?
Nadine Semer
The non-profit organization GHAP (Global Health Access Program) has an innovative program in emergency trauma care which trains community members from Karen State, Burma. As quoted from their website http://www.ghap.org/programs/landmine/: GHAP has been providing training in landmine injury management and material support to local health workers who treat approximately 150 landmine victims each year. For several years, GHAP has procured surgical instruments, anesthetics and other supplies, and provided surgical training to over 45 health workers. GHAP also initiated the development of a blood transfusion program that allows blood to be screened for infectious diseases including HIV and other diseases with light, easy-to-use rapid tests, and to be safely transfused in a jungle setting. Because of the high death rate from long transport times, GHAP and its local partner organizations have establish "trauma centers" (specially equipped mobile clinics) that can offer transfusions and other lifesaving emergency care.
I've had the opportunity to help with a few of these trainings- these community medics are quite skilled and amazing people.
Attached resource:
Link leads to: http://www.ghap.org/programs/landmine/
Source: Human Resources for Health
Keywords: Acute Trauma, Innovations for Resource-Limited Settings, Surgical Workforce
12:35 AM, 1 Apr 2010 | Permalink