This will be a one month elective in Lilongwe, Malawi, Africa. One of our pediatric cardiology faculty who is working there in a pediatric outpatient clinic has agreed to precept me during the rotation. My primary objective will be to see pediatric patients with congential and acquired heart disease, perform echocardiograms on the wards and in clinic. My main focus will be on diagnosis & treatment of rheumatic heart disease and spread awareness about rheumatic heart disease. I will also be involved in teaching medical students, interns, registrars, and colleagues about pediatric cardiac disease and echocardiography
My interest in learning and understanding rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease motivates me to seek an elective in Malawi. Malawi has one of the highest prevalences of rheumatic heart disease in the world.I will assist Dr. Sanyahumbi with cardiology consults at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH). I will also work in the weekly pediatric cardiology clinic at KCH alongside Dr. Sanyahumbi.
I will also assist with screening children for early rheumatic heart disease with echocardiography. The faculty I will be working with runs a pediatric cardiology clinic in Malawi and has access to basic resources and manpower including an echocardiogram machine to take care of these children. I will also give at least 2 lectures to trainees while I am in Lilongwe, and will do hands on physical exam skills training with medical students
My interest in learning and understanding rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease motivates me to seek an elective in Malawi. Malawi has one of the highest prevalences of rheumatic heart disease in the world. This rotation will give me a good opportunity to learn about the disease and will help me in my future work to preventing and treat rheumatic heart disease in children in the 3rd world countries as a pediatric cardiologist.
I think I learned a lot from the trip. Usually in the morning I will go to the outreach clinics to see patients with Rheumatic Heart Disease. There I will perform echocardiograms on many children every morning which would help them with their treatment. In the afternoon I’ll come back to the Kamuzu Central Hospitals where I will see consults for pediatric cardiology asked by the primary care team in the emergency department as well as pediatric wards. This helped to diagnose and treat the children with heart disease promptly in the very busy hospital which everyone was very appreciative of.
