Yaounde: Medics enhance skills to boost emergency care.

The training was organised by World Health Organisation, WHO, Ministry of Public Health, International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, and African Federation of Emergency Medicine, AFEM.

It was aimed at building the capacities of people in the first line of healthcare to better take care of patients in emergency.

Through this, it was disclosed, there will be an amelioration of emergency care of patients and reduce mortality of emergency patients.

In his address at the closing ceremony of the training, WHO Cameroon Representative, Dr. Phanuel Habimana, said: “Every day, people are in need of care for medical emergencies. More than 50% of the world's mortality can be attributed to emergency medical conditions. In low-resource settings, the need is particularly great: 90% of injury-related deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, LMICs, and patients in these countries have the highest rates of mortality from acute complications of chronic diseases”.

He added that: “Improving outcomes for patients with emergency medical conditions require several conditions to be met, including: patient awareness of the existence of an emergency medical condition and the ability to seek emergency medical care, access to a medical facility capable of providing emergency care, and high quality care in the emergency unit”.

“The frontline provider must be prepared to manage all of these patients in an emergency situation, especially in a resource-limited setting that may be hours or days away from advanced or specialised care,” Habimana added.

He then went ahead to state that improving access to basic emergency healthcare services “must go hand in hand with improving the quality and safety of these services”.

“Recognising the importance of basic emergency care, the World Health Organization, WHO, in collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, and the International Federation for Emergency Medicine, IFEM, developed the Basic Emergency Care, BEC, course in 2015 for frontline providers who manage acute life-threatening situations with limited resources,” he disclosed.

“It is therefore thanks to this training held during this week on the WHO/ICRC BEC that 22 participants from these different countries mentioned above, had their capacities reinforced on the ABCDE approach (A=Airway, B=Breathing, C=Circulation, D=Neurological status and E=Exposure) and the identification of primary lesions in order to increase the chances of survival of victims in pre-hospital or patients arriving in health facilities, by combining quality theoretical courses and practical courses as well as direct simulations,” the WHO Representative stated.

To ameliorate emergency care in hospitals                                       

Speaking to the press after the event, the representative of the Minister of Public Health, in the person of Etoundi Mballa George Alain, Director of Diseases in the ministry, said with the emergence of COVID-19, it was found that the services of emergency care were highly solicited. He said the government of Cameroon made a huge effort to acquire medico-technical materials to render these emergency services.

Etoundi added that the training will go a long way to ameliorate emergency care delivery in hospitals.  

Also speaking to the press, Dr. Phanuel Habimana said the training comes in the context of many other efforts the government of Cameroon has made particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. He disclosed that, already, about 500 doctors and nurses have been trained across the country to manage severe cases of COVID-19.

“This module is an addition to all the experience that has been acquired in the country, to train health workers, doctors and nurses in the management of emergency situation in the health facilities,” he said.

“We are very proud that this is the first training in Cameroon but we have also received participants from other countries…This is a training of trainers. The idea is to take the training to other regions of Cameroon and over the next two years to have a big number of people capacitated and equipped to manage emergency situations in hospitals,” he noted.