The Gambia Fizan Abdullah MD candidate at the School of Medicine
The leading causes of death in the Gambia include road traffic accidents, anemia, and pregnancy-related complications such as sepsis, obstructed labor, and hemorrhage. All of these conditions require immediate life-saving, basic surgical and anesthesia care. Unfortunately, most first referral level health facilities in the Gambia have no specialist surgical teams. In addition, the lack of health technologies to perform essential interventions such as respiratory support, suction, and provision of oxygen often inhibits quality surgical procedures in the Gambia. New evidence suggests that surgery can have an integral role in primary health care and is a viable strategy for prevention, and a cost effective way of dealing with many of the health challenges of the resource-constrained settings. Thus, interventions which seek to quantify the availability of surgical services would be of tremendous benefit to the Gambia. In such a resource-constrained area, it becomes increasingly important to quantify the quality of surgical and anesthesia care being provided, develop resource-appropriate technical interventions, and establish policies for the optimal use of medical technology to improve patient health. The primary objectives of this project will be to 1) gather information on the situation of access to basic surgical and anesthesia care in the Gambia; 2) develop surgical and anesthesia equipment specification guidelines; and 3) develop a tool for assessing the progress of the World Health Organization's Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care Project.
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Adam Iddriss
