05 April 2021
Six years ago, the AO Alliance kicked off its programs to improve care of the injured in 23 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in sub-Saharan Africa and 8 in Asia. The results are in, and we can confidently say that a great deal has been achieved:
Key achievements in 2020
In-person education
Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic has stalled much of our in-person education events in 2020, we are pleased to report that thanks to our dedicated network of faculty and volunteers in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, we were nonetheless able to deliver a total of 67 in-person courses on fracture management principles (Africa: 35, Asia: 32), in strict accordance with local health and sanitary regulations.
A total of 1,852 healthcare workers participated in those events, including trauma and orthopedic surgeons, residents in training, operating room personnel, ward nurses, paramedics, orthopedic clinical officers and plaster technicians.
Online education
As it became clear that the pandemic would be with us for quite some time, the AO Alliance explored opportunities for online education to keep its community of healthcare workers engaged and ensure access to educational resources. A collaboration with AO Trauma enabled us to sponsor 99 trauma and orthopedic surgeons from our countries in sub-Saharan Africa and 91 from our countries in Asia to attend online courses organized by AO Trauma.
Our French-speaking Africa faculty ”“ Dr Florent Anicet Lekina (Cameroon), Prof. Patrick Dakouré (Burkina Faso) and Dr Abalo Anani (Togo) ”“ put in place an online education platform consisting of 10 modules on fracture care in French. The platform was launched in May 2020.
Lastly, the AO Alliance has signed on to Moodle Workspace and is working with Synergy Learning to create an AO Alliance online education platform to ensure that healthcare workers in our countries do not lose out on opportunities to deepen their knowledge about fracture care. The educational assets are currently in development.
Mask donation for Ethiopia
The AO Alliance secured a donation of 100,000 surgical masks for healthcare workers in Ethiopia from Naton Medical Group, a well-established medtech enterprise in China.