Capacity Building in Emergency Care: Training Providers to Save Lives in Rural Uganda
Capacity Building in Emergency Care: Training Providers to Save Lives in Rural Uganda
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Partner Organization(s)
Global Emergency Care, Masaka Regional Referral Hospital, Karoli Lwanga Hospital, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Emergency Medicine Uganda
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Project goal
The goal of this project is to make lifesaving care available to all Ugandans.
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UIC Lead Faculty Contact
Stacey Chamberlain, MD, MPH
Project/Activity Summary
Every hour, in every district, Ugandans experience emergencies – acute medical, surgical, or obstetric conditions, for which there is a time-limited opportunity to intervene before the patient deteriorates or experiences preventable disability or death. Developing systematic approaches to expand access to quality emergency care not only addresses this source of preventable disability and death, but also strengthens the country’s national health system, reduces morbidity and mortality from both communicable and non-communicable disease, provides secondary prevention, improves capability for disease surveillance, and strengthens disaster preparedness.
In 2007, the World Health Assembly passed Resolution 60.22, highlighting the need for emergency care (EC) and calling for allocation of resources to improve access to EC and for collaborations between non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments, and other stakeholders to build and strengthen capacity for emergency care service delivery. The University of Illinois Center for Global Health has partnered with an NGO called Global Emergency Care (GEC), which has been working in Uganda since 2008. GEC, in partnership with numerous stakeholders, has developed a unique training program for emergency care-trained clinicians. Through their training, these “Emergency Care Practitioners” (ECPs) develop specialized skills that allow them to provide emergency care safely and effectively, while at the same time expanding the emergency health care workforce. The program has also trained research assistants who have been collecting data to evaluate program outcomes. Numerous indicators demonstrate improvement in health outcomes with significant reductions in under-five child mortality and reductions in mortality rates for conditions including pneumonia, diarrhea, and sepsis.
Impact
Number of partner institutions trained: 3
Number of practitioners trained: 35
Number of researchers trained: 10
Number of policymakers trained: N/A
Total Number of persons trained: 45