On the 1st of September CapaCare-cofounder Dr. Håkon Bolkan defended his PhD-thesis “Addressing surgical needs where there is no surgeon”. The Phd is the culmination of six years of research in West-Africa following the development of the surgical training program in Sierra Leone. The publications included mapping of surgical activity in the country, as well as an assessment of productivity and quality of care provided by Surgical Assistant Community Health Officers. One of the papers also used surgery as an indicator to assess hospital function during the first year of the West-African Ebola outbreak. The work concludes that there are very few surgeries preformed in Sierra Leone and that there is great need for innovative strategies to address the shortage of health workers. It also proves that task sharing can be a safe strategy and has the potential to double the number of surgical procedures done in public sectors within the next years.
In conjunction with the PhD-defence, the first international symposium dedicated to global surgery and anaesthetic care was hosted in Norway. Organized by NTNU and St.Olavs Hospital the symposium futured a number of notable international speakers and CapaCare Sierra Leone was represented by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Ibrahim Bundu and SACHO Seibatu Sia Kemoh.
Chief Surgeon at Connaught Hospital Dr. Ibrahim Bundu and CapaCare boardmember Dr. Peter Bo at St.Olavs Hospital in Trondheim