Dear Colleagues,
Thank you so much for your response to this years Doctors Day in May. So far we have raised over $60,000 which as you know goes a very long way in providing health services in the developing world.
Real figures are very difficult to obtain in Africa but major depletion of health workers is and will continue to be inevitable. Just look at the poster below and imagine the situation in countries where PPE is so hard to come by and even testing for Covid is extremely patchy at best.
And what about the patients?
A recent Lancet study found that among 3,077 critically ill Covid patients admitted to African hospitals, 48.2 percent died within 30 days, compared with a global average of 31.5 percent.
A big part of the problem is the lack of training of health workers- something that TTD particularly focuses on.
Further in the Lancet report:
Almost 16 percent of hospitals had ECMO, but it was offered to less than 1 percent of patients. Similarly, although 68 percent of the sites had access to dialysis to treat kidney failure, which is common in severe Covid cases, only 10 percent of the critically ill patients received it. Half the patients who died were never given oxygen, but the authors of the study said they had little data to explain why.
A Lancet editorial by experts not involved in the study said, “It is common in Africa to have expensive equipment that is non-functional due to poor maintenance or lack of skilled human resources.” Some 40 percent of the medical equipment in Africa was out of service, according to a 2017 report by the Tropical Health and Education Trust, the editorial said. Another factor is that few doctors in Africa have the training in pulmonary and critical care that is considered essential in treating Covid patients.
May is almost over.
If you have not already done so, please consider joining with your colleagues who have already contributed and thereby greatly supporting health worker colleagues.
Regards to all
Rob Baume
On behalf of the Directors of Twice the Doctor