Global Health Blog - December 2011
I just got back to Botswana after attending the Emergency Medicine in the Developing World conference in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa! It was exciting to meet so many emergency physicians, residents, paramedics, and nurses from across Africa. Emergency Medicine (EM) is one of the newest specialties in the world with a 30-year history in the United States, and a 10-year history in South Africa. EM training programs have recently launched in Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and in Botswana. The conference was a good opportunity to compare notes, share experiences, and discuss future collaboration. We even have our own medical journal now, the African Journal of Emergency Medicine, and my team from Botswana co-authored a paper describing the history of our work:
Development of Emergency Medicine in Botswana
Alongside academic EM training programs, we are all working to build acute care, emergency, and pre-hospital services in our respective countries. The sustainability of these models will depend on the success of our advocacy in demanding these services from the health systems in which we work. New international campaigns focusing on road traffic injuries (the decade of action for road safety launched this year) and non-communicable diseases will hopefully overlap with and reinforce our efforts...