Care and surgery
Training and skills transfer
Training and skills transfer
Training is at the heart of La Chaîne de l'Espoir's action. By developing medical skills locally, we can multiply our capacity to save more and more children.
Background
Sub-Saharan Africa is 15 times
fewer doctors per capita than France.
More than 200 missions
medical training courses run by La Chaîne de l’Espoir every year.
Sources: WHO, La Chaîne de l’Espoir
Our action to strengthen screening
Coping with the shortage of trained caregivers
In many countries, the lack of qualified medical staff and appropriate care structures prevents a large part of the population from accessing quality care.
Children and women are the first to be affected: infant surgery is rarely performed, as the care of newborns is complex and costly, and few doctors are trained in these pediatric specialties.
In addition, around 830 women die every day worldwide from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. However, most of these deaths could be avoided with appropriate medical care.
By reinforcing local hospital structures and developing the skills of medical teams, we are promoting medical autonomy in underprivileged countries, enabling them to operate on their own children.
“All our missions in the field have shown us the need to strengthen local healthcare systems, as we cannot transfer all the children to be operated on to France. The training we provide enables local surgeons to carry out increasingly complex operations, and thus to be able to treat a wider range of pathologies on site.”
Dr Laurence Boutin, Deputy Medical Director
Training while saving lives: the dual success of our surgical missions
Wherever we operate, we provide training for local medical teams. During our missions, our volunteer doctors and surgeons carry out surgical operations alongside local healthcare staff, strengthening the medical capabilities of both the health facilities and the country.
Training is a real virtuous circle: training a surgeon to operate independently will enable him to save lives; then he can train other doctors and students in his country, who will in turn be able to operate. This approach enables us to save a growing number of children.
When doctors trained by La Chaîne de l’Espoir train others
The healthcare professionals at the hospitals opened by La Chaîne de l’Espoir are growing the chain of knowledge sharing: before the opening of the Cuomo Cardiopediatric Center in Dakar in 2016, Senegalese doctors came to benefit from the medical expertise of teams at the Heart Institute in Hô Chi Minh City, Vietnam. They had been trained by Alain Deloche, founder of La Chaîne de l’Espoir. Then, in 2019, three Burkinabe doctors trained with their Vietnamese colleagues. This sharing of knowledge has made it possible to carry out the first open-heart surgery in Burkina Faso in 2021!
Now autonomous, the teams at the Cuomo Cardiopediatric Center in Dakar are also passing on their knowledge: in 2021, they will welcome a surgical team from the Le Luxembourg Mother and Child Hospital in Bamako, Mali.
Training the surgeons and healthcare professionals of tomorrow
We provide financial and technical support for training courses leading to a diploma, in order to strengthen medical skills and knowledge specific to children’s health.
“My dream was to become a pediatric surgeon. In Benin, when I started my training in 2012, there were only four pediatric surgeons for 16 million Beninese.”
Dr. Eude Ulrich Elvis Goudjo, pediatric surgeon at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Cotonou in Benin, received a grant from La Chaîne de l’Espoir during his studies.
Support for training doctors in West Africa
Since 2014, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has been helping to train doctors enrolled in pediatric surgery specialization courses in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Conakry, Senegal and Togo). Twice a year, in each of the six program countries, we organize teaching seminars in pediatric orthopedic and visceral surgery. Theoretical courses are supplemented by interventions in the operating theatre, in which students can participate. In addition, every year La Chaîne de l’Espoir offers some of the most disadvantaged students the opportunity to obtain a scholarship to help them meet their daily needs and pay their tuition and school fees.
Eight medical specializations for Afghan doctors
Launched in 2012 at the Institut Médical Français pour la Mère et l’Enfant in Kabul and recognized by the Afghan authorities, the Postgraduate Medical Education (PGME) program trains future Afghan doctors in nine specialties: pediatrics, pediatric surgery, cardiology, orthopedics, anesthesia, radiology, clinical pathology, cardiac surgery, gynecology/obstetrics. IMFE is the only establishment in Afghanistan to offer training in five of these specialties.
Support for training of healthcare professionals
Depending on the needs identified in the field, La Chaîne de l’Espoir provides financial or technical support for additional training courses for local healthcare professionals. Discover below the portrait of Jean Diome, a Senegalese biomedical engineer, in training at Grenoble University Hospital.
Innovating for remote support
Present in 27 countries, La Chaîne de l’Espoir works in areas regularly affected by war, conflict or epidemics. Sometimes, the kilometers that separate us cannot be covered. In many developing countries, the lack of trained personnel is also a real challenge. This is why we have developed distance training and the use oftelemedicine tools.
Our echoes® platform enables local medical staff to benefit from the advice of expert doctors at a distance. This tool has been deployed for ultrasound scans to monitor pregnancies and to help diagnose cardiac pathologies.
Through this program, we are helping to develop local medical techniques and approaches. In this way, we are helping to train local doctors to reduce maternal and infant mortality, which is common in the countries where we operate.
Distance learning: accelerating and multiplying our impact beyond borders
Online training isalso provided, in particular to meet the needs of medical teams in hard-to-reach areas. To continue to pass on medical skills despite the travel restrictions associated with the Covid-19 health crisis, La Chaîne de l’Espoir teams offered more than 70 distance learning courses in 2020. Led by specialists, the courses covered a wide range of topics: hygiene, medical, biomedical, radiology and more.
