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Surgery is a life-saving health intervention yet 5 billion people worldwide have no access to safe surgery. A critical problem is lack of appropriate, robust equipment; this leads to errors and mortality. We will provide equipment and training to improve the safety of surgery for patients in Liberia
Categories
Beneficiaries
Situation
Following a long civil war and the devastating Ebola crisis, Liberian hospitals continue to struggle to provide safe surgery for patients needing even the most everyday operations, such as c-sections. Due to persistent power cuts, surgeons are frequently forced to operate with poor lighting, sometimes using just a mobile phone light to deliver a baby. Many theatres do not have basic equipment to monitor patients, and do not use a standard surgical checklist which is proven to reduce mortality.
Solution
We will provide robust, specially-adapted headlights and monitoring equipment to surgical teams in hospitals across Liberia. These come with rechargeable batteries which can be charged up overnight and used throughout a busy day in the operating theatre, even when the power fails. Alongside, we will run training in techniques to improve safety through better teamwork and encouraging the use of the Surgical Safety Checklist (a tool proven to reduce complications and deaths by as much as 40%).
