Dylan’s Story – Association of Anesthesiologists of Uganda Meeting

I spend part of last week in Kampala for the Association of Anesthesiologists of Uganda’s 3rd annual scientific meeting with Paulin, the chair here in Rwanda. It was fantastic to see so many attendees there for the meeting if this thriving society. An active society of anesthesia can make a huge contribution to training, setting national standards for anesthesia care, promoting research and scholarship and other forms of collaboration. What I saw at the AAU meeting is something to aspire to for the relatively dormant Rwandan Society of Anesthesiologists.

Delegates had come from the US, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania. In particular, I was lucky to find Dr Mahelet Tadesse, the vice-chair of the Department of Anesthesia at Black Lion Hospital where CASIEF has a partnership. She was there with 2 of her colleagues and we met with Paulin so that we could make the most of the opportunity if these two programs learning from each other. Some challenges are the same – the need to scale up human resources for anesthesia quickly with few local faculty. Other challenges are different, like the relationship between physician and non-physician anesthesia providers, and I think there’s great scope for South-South collaboration between programs like this. I’m planning to visit Addis early 2018 to get to know the program there, and I think it would be of value to bring Pauin, if possible. Mahelet and her colleagues expressed an interest in visiting and learning from the Rwanda program. It would be great to make that work.

In the evening I managed to catch up with some old and some new friends. The AAU had a Gala dinner with some quite amazing dancing typical of various regions of Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. We were invited to get up and join.

You’re never too young to advocate for improved access to safe surgical and anesthesia care!