From Oxford to South Africa: A global effort to strengthen paediatric surgery
Professor Kokila Lakhoo was recently invited by Dr Elliot Motloung to visit Sefako Makghato University (SMU) in the North West Province of South Africa. The purpose of this visit was to develop neonatal skills and to discuss and support the development of paediatric surgery within the province.
Paediatric Surgery
Dr Elliot Motloung is a newly appointed Head of Department for Paediatric Surgery at SMU, and he arranged a meeting with the Head of Surgery at SMU, Professor Koto, and discussions with the Head of paediatric Surgery from Limpopo province, Professor Tshifularo. We had a fruitful meeting on the development of paediatric surgery and support from Oxford was offered for clinical and research capacity building. We attended the daily ward round and were impressed by the four trainees who presented the patients. They were clear and concise in their presentations and were knowledgeable.
Neonatal Surgical Skills Course
The faculty included myself and my PhD student, Dr Gerlin Naidoo. We are both South Africans by birth.
Dr Elliot Motloung was given a list of requirements for the course in advance. We were impressed by the skills, laboratory facilities and the expert delivery of the equipment and tissue by the laboratory technician. We were offered chicken tissue which worked perfectly for neonatal simulation models. This was our first experience with chicken tissue, and we hope to use this in the future.
With local help, we worked the day before to prepare the simulation models and at the same time informally ran the ‘training the trainer’ session so that this course could independently run by the local faculty and cascade it in the region. This is a skills-based course in neonatal surgery. We had 20 participants ranging from paediatric surgery trainees, adult general surgeons to senior paediatric surgeons. The models covered bowel anastomosis, gastrostomies, duodenal atresia and repair of trachea-oesophageal fistula and oesophageal atresia. Dr Motloung added a pyloric stenosis model and due to time constraints we did not embark on developing the colostomy model which we hope to do with Dr Elliot Motloung in the future.
The feedback was positive. Nineteen candidates (95%) wished for a two-day course, repeated courses during the year, did not suggest any changes and felt the programme was fit for purpose with no changes required. One (5%) candidate who was struggling to get a training post felt the course was not beneficial to him. We discussed this with the in-house faculty and his consultant who attended the course. The view was that this individual was advised not to pursue a surgical career.
Faculty and candidates on the Neonatal Surgical Skills Course.