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From Judex Okoro, Calabar
A group, Project Cure, has donated multimillion-naira hospital equipment and trained over 500 anaesthetists across Nigeria in modern techniques and airway management.
The training would help empower the medics with modern equipment to enable them improve their service as well as improve perioperative care and diminish suffering by patients.
Project Cure, the largest organisation in the world that sends hospital equipment overseas, facilitated the training and donation of the tools. It had already trained some anaesthetists in Abuja, Kano, Bauchi and Lagos before Calabar.
Speaking at the trianing held in Calabar, Cross River State, the director of Project Cure, Dr. Daniel Tapia, said they were in Nigeria to hold airway workshops, which also incorporate enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS).
According Tapai, ERAS is an evidence-based systematic standard of care approach to improve recovery of patients after surgery.
He said: “We are also demonstrating ultrasound-guided regional anaesthetic techniques. I believe it will improve perioperative care and diminish suffering.
“Using simulation to care for patients beforehand creates greater safety for the patients, and allows mistakes to be made on mannequins rather than real individual people.
“It creates greater sense of ease and comfort for the provider so that they know what to do when crises occur; simulation is a wonderful way to train.
“The focus of this project is use of bougies for intubation and to maximize the importance of these airway equipment accompanied by training and given individually to the people that attend the training so they know how to use it when the need arises. An estimated 500 personnel have been trained across the country”, he said.
Speaking also, a consultant anaesthesiologist from the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi, and the coordinator of the airway equipment for African countries, Dr. Rabiu Mohammed, listed the equipment donated to include handheld butterfly ultrasound scanners, video laryngoscopes, pulse oximeters, airway training mannequins and intubating laryngeal mask airways.
Mohammed disclosed that more than 36 million people die anually from unsafe surgery and some complications from surgery, adding that “these complications may arise from anaesthesia, which stems from inadequate equipment for airway management and loss of airway management during the surgery, and this training and equipment will help end such deaths in the country.”
On her part, the lead, South South airway management, and the head of department of anaesthesia, UCTH, Dr. Queeneth Kalu, said: “Airway management is very critical to patient care, if a person loses the airway, it’s a matter of four minutes and the patient is either dead or would have suffered severe cerebral anoxia and we don’t want to get to that point.
“So, we want every body who is looking after patients, particularly in critical areas like accident and emergency, the operating room, intensive care unit, to be very conversant with the principles of airway management so that we can keep our patients safe.
“Over 90 practitioners have been trained in the South South and it has been a very worthwhile experience. We owe Project Cure a lot of thanks because, as you can see, everybody is holding a bag and in that bag there are modern airway kits used in developed parts of the world and Project Cure believes that we deserve the best.
“The participants need to go back and step down the training so that the message of airway management can spread and many more people will become conversant and competent in modern ways of managing patients.
“We want the public to insist on being cared for by trained personnel. If you’re having surgery, ensure an anaesthesiologist is taking care of you. People should not patronise quacks.”
A participant and the head of department, anaesthesia, Federal Medical Centre, Asaba, Delta State, Dr. Onyeoji Chinedu, commended the group for the training, saying the new skills would help keep them abreast with what is in vogue and the new ways of managing patients and “we have also been gifted airway equipment for our centres.”
Another participant and consultant anaesthetist and assistant lead, Society for Airway Management for the South-South, Dr. Bassey Nakanda, said: “This training is important because airway management is a critical part of anaesthesia and we need to improve our standard of care in line with other parts of the world and update our standard of practice.’’
Also commending Project Cure for taking interest in effective healthcare delivery in the state, Prof. Stella Eguma of anaesthesiology at the University of Calabar said they have been working with Project Cure for the past six years. She said the state-of-the-art equipment provided for managing patients’ airway during surgery would go a long way to assist in quality healthcare delivery.
“They have helped tremendously and we are grateful because Project Cure has brought to us state-of-the-art equipment, which government has not provided,” she stated.
