Bringing Emergency Medicine to Eswatini

​BY ADERONKE SUSAN AKAPO, DO; KATHLEEN ANNE ROCCO, MD; EDWARD KAKISH, DO; & KRIS BRICKMAN, MDEswatini, known as Swaziland until April 2018, is a small South African country approximately the size of New Jersey. It has 1.3 million people, and is bordered by South Africa and Mozambique.The country primarily comprises rural tribal areas with two major cities, Manzini and Mbabane, in the central portion of the country. Eswatini holds the unfortunate distinction of having the highest HIV rate in the world—approximately 26 percent of its population. Emergency medicine within this small country is clearly in its developmental stages—it is not recognized as a specialty, nor are there any training programs or requirements for emergency departments.Roger Pachalka, MD, an emergency physician from Wright State University in Dayton, OH, initiated collaborative efforts with representatives from the University of Toledo's global health program and the department of emergency medicine along with pediatric physicians from Nationwide Children's Hospital. All were invited to meet with the Eswatini Ministry of Health in January 2018 to address the development of emergency medicine within the country. This initial exploratory visit and several meetings with the Ministry of Health and hospital officials at Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital and Mbabane Government Hospital identified the need to develop a triage system, establish a true prioritization process to separate emergency departmen...
Source: Going Global - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs