I am a pediatric cardiac intensivist from the University of Maryland and will be volunteering in Oraifite, Nigeria at the Dame Irene Okwuosa Hospital caring for children undergoing congenital heart surgery. The VOOM Foundation performs over 40% of the congenital heart surgery in Nigeria where approximately 20,000 surgeries per year are needed, only 200-300 are performed. We are not only providing and teaching direct patient care, but provide ongoing remote education and tele-simulation education so that skills and knowledge are transferred. The goal is not only to provide surgeries to children with congenital heart disease in Nigeria, but to also equip the local team to care for these children with their own, innate capacity.
sub-Saharan Africa has the second highest prevalence of congenital heart disease (CHD) in the world and very few children have access to curative surgery. Those with access often travel out of the country for surgery which leaves the vast majority of children without access to surgery. Congenital heart disease is the number one killer of children in the world due to congenital defects and most of the burden in borne by those in low-resource settings. The impact, personally, is double: saving the lives of vulnerable children with curative surgery and impacting the capacity of local teams to improve access to congenital heart surgery. The population we serve comes from all over Nigeria, but especially Lagos and the eastern regions. Most patients are indigent and cannot afford cardiac surgery or close cardiology follow up and have lesions such as Tetralogy of Fallot, ventricular septal defect, transposition of the great arteries, and complete atrioventricular canals. We are able to provide free, curative heart surgery to these patients. Additionally, we are committed to serving the medical community in Nigeria. We have a host of nursing, cardiology, and operating room staff that we provide teaching, resources, and clinical mentorship to improve the capacity of the local team to care for such children without international guests. To that end, we have published multiple manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating the impact of our education on the skills, mortality, and clinical outcomes in Nigeria for children undergoing congenial heart surgery.
The expected impact is to reduce deaths from congenital heart disease, to establish Dame Irene Okwuosa Hospital as the example for congenital heart surgery in Nigeria, and to have an independent congenital heart sugery program in Nigeria. We have learned that mentorship is key to sustaining success and have established formalized mentorship, education, and telesimulation programs to ensure skills transfer and maintenance. We believe in a peer-modeling style of teaching, where every person who cares for patients is paired with the same. For our volunteers we teach how to orient, train and teach novice frontline nurses; we have an ongoing lecture series on the care of patients with congenital heart surgery, and a simulation program that is conducted remotely via ZOOM. While we are focusing on our small corner in Nigeria, with our last lecture series we had over 100 participants, from all specialties and all regions of Nigeria participating. We have made demonstrable impact in skills maintenance and clinical independence at Dame Irene Okwuosa Hospital.
We were able to complete 18 full cardiac repairs on 18 children, aged 3 months to 21 years! In addition to congenital heart repairs, we also completed 22 interventional cath procedures. During our time in Nigeria, we accomplished our 400th cardiac surgery. Thank you so much for supporting our work in Nigeria
