Burkina Faso

Axes of intervention

Care and surgery
Prevention and screening
Training and skills transfer

Start date: 2018

As Burkina Faso sinks into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, La Chaîne de l'Espoir continues to mobilize to develop access to infant heart surgery in the country. It is also helping to raise awareness and provide medical and surgical care for children from vulnerable families suffering from facial malformations and noma (a pathology that destroys facial tissue).

Background

Humanitarian emergency in Burkina Faso

1 in 5 Burkinabè

is in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Half of the people

in need of humanitarian aid are children.

One in ten people

had to leave his home to escape poverty and violence.

Source: OCHA

Confronted with attacks by armed and jihadist groups since 2015, Burkina Faso is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in its history. This is leading to massive population displacements and a drastic reduction in agricultural, livestock and food production in the affected areas.

This climate of extreme violence is causing the already fragile healthcare system to malfunction. Theft of ambulances, intimidation, kidnapping and murder of health personnel, vandalism: this growing insecurity has resulted in a reduction in activity and the closure of many health centers, depriving millions of Burkinabè of access to essential care.

Our humanitarian aid action in Burkina Faso

Pediatric cardiac surgery: from the opening of a dedicated department to the first open-heart operations

In Burkina Faso, 12% of deaths are due to cardiovascular disease. Every year, 6,827 newborns are born with heart defects. In addition to these congenital heart defects, there are acquired heart defects due to poor hygiene and unsanitary water conditions, which have almost completely disappeared from developed countries.

However, until 2019, there was no cardiac surgery department in Burkina Faso. Since then, La Chaîne de l’Espoir, through its humanitarian missions in Burkina Faso, has been supporting the development of cardiac surgery at the Tengandogo University Hospital in Ouagadoudou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The association provides logistical, technical, medical and surgical support to the local team, enabling them to operate autonomously on children suffering from cardiac pathologies. To train local staff, a whole chain of solidarity has been set in motion: skills transfer missions within the hospital, training courses for medical teams at the Alain Carpentier Institute in Vietnam under the supervision of Prof. Alain Deloche, training at the Cuomo Pediatric Cardiac Center in Senegal with health professionals who have themselves been trained by La Chaîne de l’Espoir, etc.

Since then, a series of major firsts have followed: closed-heart operations in 2019, open-heart companion operations in 2021, and the first fully autonomous open-heart operations in 2022.

“I decided to become a cardiac surgeon because, during my medical studies, I saw many children dying from congenital heart disease and cardiac complications linked to rheumatic fever, which are diseases that have virtually disappeared in Europe but remain endemic in Africa.”

Dr Adama Sawadogo, Burkinabe cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon trained with the support of La Chaîne de l’Espoir

Facial deformities and noma: surgery to repair children’s faces

In Burkina Faso, facial pathologies and malformations, including noma, facial tumors and cleft lip and palate, are poorly understood both by the local population and by medical and paramedical staff. Noma is a form of facial gangrene that kills 80,000 children every year. This “disease of poverty” destroys tissue, leaving a gaping wound in the face. Facial malformations also threaten children’s survival, causing feeding and respiratory problems. Ignorance of these pathologies is compounded by superstition. Sick children are very often stigmatized, socially excluded, sometimes rejected by their families and dropped out of school.

In collaboration with its partners, La Chaîne de l’Espoir, which has been present on humanitarian missions in Burkina Faso since 2018, is rolling out a prevention and integrated care program for children suffering from these pathologies in Burkina Faso.