MAF production and teaching team in Dakar, Senegal

Last week MAF Founders Natalie Greenwold and Eric Jauniaux along with sonographer Raj Dave and filming crew Marissa Lestrade and Charlotte Wells attended the FIGO course organized in Dakar, Senegal.

According to the UN 2008 statistics, maternal mortality rate in Senegal was around 410 deaths per 100,000 live births. Although this number has seen a drop since the 750 recorded in 1990, it is still incredibly high especially when compared with 12 for the UK and 24 for the USA.

 

This indicates that so many women are continuing to die needlessly from preventable causes.

 

Core to both FIGO and MAF is the belief that the transfer of knowledge and skills will lead to improved provision of health care services in Senegal and will begin to address these problems. This is inline with the findings of Kodio et al. who state in their article, ‘Levels and causes of maternal mortality in Senegal’, published in the journal of Tropical Medicine and International Health, that:

 

"sustained reductions in maternal mortality will only be possible if modern high-quality obstetric care is made available to all women through a system of professional midwifery and referral hospital care".

 

The course was a joint collaboration between FIGO and MAF with the support of Prof M Stark from the New European Surgical Academy (NESA) and Prof JC Moreau of the University of Dakar.

 

The course which included both theoretical and practical training was designed to train local doctors and midwives in Obstetric ultrasound and surgery as well as local Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Gynaecological surgery.

 

All lectures and hands on sessions were focus on teaching techniques that are adapted to the practical need of a sub-Saharan Africa and included simplified techniques for Caesarean section and vaginal hysterectomy, tuning and setting-up an ultrasound machine and diagnosing and preventing maternal and fetal obstetric complications.

 

The introduction of the ultrasound scanning into routine antenatal care aims to increase the number of pregnant women attending clinics early in their pregnancy. This in turn exposes them to antenatal care advice as well as early diagnosis of complications such as placenta praevia and multiple gestations. This further enables the hospitals to collect more accurate data on deliveries allowing them to better plan staffing and resources for deliveries.

 

A previous training course on Caesarean Section organised by Prof M Stark in Dakar 11 years ago resulted in the establishment of a simpler, less traumatic and more economic method to perform a Caesarean Section not only in Senegal but also in all French speaking countries of Africa including Madagascar. This method dramatically reduces the risk of complication to women in need of this procedure.

 

This proves the concept that teaching methods that are practical, focused and adapted to local need can go a very long way. Not just horizontally, via regional association of specialists, but also vertically, through the use of training films that can be left behind to train the next generation of doctors and nurses.

 

The entire week was filmed and a large amount of data and information was collected which will be extremely useful for our next series of teaching modules.

 

MAF would like to thank Prof JC Moreau, his medical team and his patients who were extremely supportive enabling us to establish a long term relationship with the local team.

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