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Good health relations between Spain and Niger

2022-04-22T03:44:23.625Z


Six Spanish doctors travel to Niamey to train 200 specialists in anesthesia and resuscitation and in surgery at the Abdou Moumouni University. A Spanish teacher from this university recounts the experience of these six professionals


On March 12, a group of six Spanish medical specialists landed in Niamey, the capital of Niger, with the aim of carrying out theoretical and practical training at the National Hospital and at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Abdou Moumouni University.

For many of them, it was not the first time they had come here and, after a break due to covid-19, they were looking forward to returning to this Sahelian country.

The Niamey National Hospital (HNN), created in 1922, was founded not only to care for the sick, with a capacity of up to a thousand beds, but also as a health education center at all levels.

One hundred years later, Luis Olmedilla, Andrea Campos, Ignacio Pellín, Ana Pastor, Samuel Fernández and Anna Artigas enter the doors of the HNN to form part of the educational process offered by the center.

For a week they left behind the hospitals where they work in Spain and the United Kingdom to be teachers of more than 200 Nigerien students.

Thanks to this project financed by the Spanish Cooperation (AECID) and executed by the CSAI Foundation (State Foundation, Health, Childhood and Social Welfare) of the Spanish Ministry of Health,

The first mission was in 2019, and from there the interest arose for Niger's medical residents to learn Spanish, so that in the future they can carry out internships in hospitals in Spain.

As a reader of the AECID, I began in 2020 to give Spanish classes to some of the students who are part of this project.

Despite the fact that the lessons were entirely taught in French, that language barrier no longer existed and the Nigerien students greeted and tried to have conversations in Spanish with the newcomers.

The training that was given was aimed, for the most part, at residents of anesthesia and resuscitation and surgery, but in the classrooms you could see paediatricians, traumatologists, anesthesia technicians, general practitioners, etc.

Dr. Chaibou, an anesthesiologist and coordinator of the project in Niamey, kept adding people to the course lists and he himself told us that it was very difficult to organize all the people who wanted to attend the different training sessions given by the Spanish medical team. .

Although without official data, one of the anesthesia resident students, Saratou, calculated that the entire country has only about twenty anesthesiologists.

“It is very important to be able to access a quality education in Medicine to be able to train better and, above all, in the specialty of anesthesia.

An exchange like this makes us see other realities and helps us become better professionals” Saratou told us, who never misses the Spanish classes I teach at the National Hospital on Fridays, hoping to continue training in Spain.

An exchange like this makes us see other realities and helps us become better professionals.

Saratou, Nigerian doctor and Spanish student

In terms of health, Niger takes the prize for epidemics, which it has to face on a recurring basis: meningitis, cholera, measles, polio, diphtheria, etc.

Not to mention malaria, the recent covid-19 and the floods in the rainy season, something that is currently added to the context of insecurity in which we live due to terrorism.

For all this, simple access to health services becomes a real challenge.

Initially, the project in question was aimed at training in anesthesia and resuscitation and surgery, since it is understood as one of the fundamental pillars to achieve universal health coverage.

However, in this mission other trainings have been given, in addition to those specialized in these areas.

This is due to the importance that has been given to the theoretical and practical training of doctors from different specialties, in order to contribute to the full development of the Niger Health System and, therefore, to access to quality health. .

Nigerien health workers face challenges that Spanish doctors, luckily, do not usually have to face

Care and management of polytraumatized patients, anesthesia in thoracic surgery, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, teamwork, ultrasound in anesthesia and resuscitation and cardiopulmonary ultrasound were the courses that doctors and residents from Niamey and other parts of the country could enjoy.

In fact, the arrival of Nigerien doctors from outside the capital made the exchange of knowledge in health fields even more enriched.

The same group of Spaniards affirmed that they were the ones who were learning the most from the Nigerien experiences.

This is due to the fact that, in Niger's emergencies, there are patients who have suffered from the terrorism that plagues the country and, despite the difficulties and shortcomings that they may encounter in their day-to-day life, the health workers face some challenges to whom the Spanish doctors,

Mutual learning in medicine between Spaniards and Nigeriens began in 2019 and, three years later, it has become more than just learning and teaching.

It was obvious that this was the third time that the Spanish team had visited the country;

The students had been waiting for this training for months and before their departure they were already organizing the next visit.

The importance of sharing knowledge and experiences is palpable in any field, regardless of country and language.

Dr. Chaibou already said it the day the training was closed: “We are together.

We are neither Spanish nor Nigerien, we are citizens of the world”.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-04-22

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