Laos

Closed mission (2011-2025)

Laos is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. With its fragile healthcare infrastructure, children are the first to suffer from lack of access to care. Faced with this situation, La Chaîne de l'Espoir has been working since 2011 to support the training and skills development of local medical teams.

Background

Very difficult access to healthcare for young people

43 per 1000 :

is the mortality rate for children under 5 (compared with 4 in France).

30% of children

of children under 5 are stunted.

0.35 doctor

per 1,000 inhabitants (compared with 3.39 in France).

Sources: World Bank (2021 figures), WHO (2020 figures), Social Security (2021 figures)

With a population of 7.5 million, Laos still suffers from severe poverty – mainly in its central and northern provinces. Health indicators have improved since the 2000s, but remain well below those of other Southeast Asian countries. The mortality rate for children under 5 is very high, even though most of these deaths could be avoided with better access to healthcare. Indeed, the country has barely 0.35 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants, whereas the World Health Organization recommends six times as many.

Another obstacle is that families often have to contribute to the purchase of equipment and medicines during hospitalization, which represents a very heavy expense (several hundred dollars, when most of them are day laborers earning just a few dollars a day). Unfortunately, this financial constraint means that many of them forgo treatment.

Against this backdrop, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has been working since 2011 to train local healthcare professionals and improve the healthcare system throughout the country.

Our humanitarian action for children in Laos

A partnership between French and Laotian medical teams

Pediatric surgery led by Prof. Pierre Hélardot in Laos

Located in the capital, Ventiane, the Children’s Hospital is the leading paediatric hospital in Laos. Families from all provinces, even the most remote, come here to have their children treated. Since 2013, we’ve been organizing pediatric surgery missions there with a dual objective: to operate on Laotian children suffering from neonatal, visceral, urological pathologies, etc., but also to train Laotian healthcare professionals in pediatric specificities. This training takes the form of mentoring between the French team of surgeons, anaesthetists and specialist nurses and their Laotian counterparts. Over the years, some 200 children have undergone surgery and around ten Laotian health professionals have been trained.

These humanitarian missions in Laos have been led for almost ten years by pediatric visceral surgeon Prof. Pierre Hélardot. But while he spent an average of two months a year in the country, he soon realized that it would be impossible for him and his colleagues from La Chaîne de l’Espoir to teach pediatric surgery throughout the country. So he identified an experienced surgeon, Dr Vongphet Soulithone, and trained him to share his expertise with his local colleagues.

“I started working at the Children’s Hospital in Vientiane as a surgical intern in 2012. In 2014, I met Prof. Pierre Hélardot during one of his missions with La Chaîne de l’Espoir. He immediately took me under his wing and became my mentor. After 8 years, and more than 300 operations performed with him, I became the national referent for pediatric surgery in my country. Prof. Pierre Hélardot not only taught me his specialty, but also his philosophy around patient care.”

Dr Vongphet Soulithone, surgeon

Increasingly autonomous Laotian medical teams

Thanks to these missions, most operations are now carried out independently by Laotian health professionals.

And while Dr. Vongphet Soulithon has become the benchmark in the training of other Laotian surgeons, in 2015 he helped organize the 10th AESEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Pediatric Surgery Congress. An event that truly highlighted the professionalization of Laotian hospitalists in the field of pediatric surgery.

Today, La Chaîne de l’Espoir’s missions at the Children’s Hospital continue to focus exclusively on the most complex operations. Our aim is to continue spreading paediatric knowledge and know-how throughout the country.

“Training and teaching missions in surgery and paediatric anaesthesia are regular, enabling us to assess the team’s progress (for example, laparoscopy activity began in 2023) and to provide constant support in terms of advice and equipment. At present, the economic situation in Laos is critical. Most children have no access to paediatric surgical care. Continuing to operate in Vientiane is therefore imperative, and must be coupled with the development of activity in southern Laos.”

Christine Grapin, pediatric surgeon

A new life for Sayan and Manola!

Brother and sister Sayan and Manola were 5 and 3 years old when they underwent spleen surgery at the Children’s Hospital in Vientiane during a La Chaîne de l’Espoir mission in Laos. And that’s what saved their lives! Their family lived in the mountains in the north of the country and could not afford to have their children treated. Today, Sayan and Manola are back to normal. They can go to school and grow up serenely with their family.

Photos: Pascal Deloche / GODONG, La Chaîne de l’Espoir

Axes of intervention