Our flagship Fracture Solutions Program delivers needs-based fracture care education to healthcare workers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. By providing locally relevant fracture care education on the principles of both operative and nonoperative treatment, and supporting mentorship programs, local healthcare workers can mend musculoskeletal injuries with greater confidence, leading to better outcomes and return to gainful living for patients.
Since 2015, over 1,200 educational events have been organized across the two continents, training more than 41,000 healthcare workers.
In 2019, the AO Alliance and the Johnson & Johnson Foundation entered a collaboration to improve the quality of and access to fracture care in West Africa, starting with Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. In 2022, Sierra Leone, Liberia and South Sudan were added as target countries. The program aims to improve health outcomes by building long-term local capacity for injury and fracture care. The program provides specialized education and training to national and regional healthcare workers to deliver safe care to the injured, and to provide faculty education to improve teaching skills of surgeons and operating room personnel.
The Long Bone Fracture Program in Malawi, launched in 2022, aims to reduce the high rates of disability associated with long bone fractures. The program has three components: 1. education and training for local trauma and orthopedic healthcare workers, 2. equipment and implant donations to central and district hospitals, 3. clinical research to measure clinical parameters and patients’ functional outcomes.
The program is a partnership between the AO Alliance, the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, KidsOR, Direct Relief, the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (WFSA), Lifebox, Virtual Doctors, Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons (NOTSS), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Malawi.
