Visiting Surgical Consultants
surgical camps
Visiting teams are made up of doctors, nurses, dentists, and ancillary support who fill a gap plaguing Malawi’s understaffed and under resourced healthcare system. AHA staff work directly with local healthcare providers to identify individuals waiting for medical and dental care or surgeries that AHA teams can provide. Malawian providers help prepare patients with diagnoses and screenings before the AHA team arrives, and then work hand-in-hand to provide medical, surgical, and dental services.
Click here to join us on a future surgical trip to Malawi.
addressing surgical backlog
The low surgeon to patient ratio, the inability of many rural centers to handle even basic surgeries, and the global COVID-19 pandemic contribute to a backlog of simple surgical cases needing attention. Some surgical teams focus on addressing these backlogs to free up local talent and resources for more complex cases. For example, an AHA surgical team completed six successful stoma reversals in a single day, putting a major dent in Kamuzu Central Hospital’s backlog of 46 patients needing the essential but non-emergency procedure.
Click here to join us on a future surgical trip to Malawi.
trainings to build local capacity
In addition to providing surgical services to patients in Malawi, AHA seeks to increase the capacity of local healthcare workers by providing hands-on trainings. AHA volunteers provide hands-on training to doctors, nurses, and medical students in classrooms and surgical theaters. Past projects have included training on emergency medicine, providing lectures to medical students on cutting-edge medical techniques, and adult and infant CPR trainings for rural healthcare workers.
