West Sudan, Darfur is an area with annoying instability & tribal war. Al-Fashir is the capital of North Darfur, where the area is quiet & solemn with least tribal frictions. The best time is the rainy season, where the sandy earth absorbs the rain leaving a super fresh lively breeze. Population is not less than 3 million, they enjoy a big central hospital, airport and a medical school plus a number of other colleges.
The planned expansion of the National Centre of Gastrointestinal and Liver Disease included West Sudan as a preferred area because of the deteriorating healthcare & the increasing influx from neighbouring countries. Before we leave we were informed of Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever invading the province but this did not deter us from our prime goal.
The aim of this visit are summarized into 3 axes:
1. Nationalization and re-equip the already fashioned centres of Endoscopy and Laparoscopy.
2. Eradication of Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) and start mass vaccination of the virus at the West state
3. Ultrasound workshop mainly to draw attention to the simple efficient tool
The choice of Al-Fashir as ideal area for the activity dates back to 2003 at the time of Darfur crisis which witnessed the generous inflow of medical equipment as donations. Part of these were Ultrasound machines. We know that this equipment was in-part poorly utilized.
The 40 participants included, mainly Physicians and Surgeons, two were Obstetricians, five were Pediatricians and five were Registrars of medicine and surgery.
The first day and the opening ceremony was witnessed by a large group of doctors from various specialties and pioneers of health head-quarter representatives. My talk was preceded by the Health Authority of the District and Dr Abdulmunem Altayeb the Vice president of the National Centres of Gastrointestinal and Liver Disease of Sudan . I emphasized the importance of the magic tool in all aspects of medicine and thanked them for their enthusiastic warm welcome & eagerness to learn.
We then proceeded with the scheduled program. Mohamed Omer an expert on Doppler had simplified Doppler into an easy assimilated issue.
The lecture session followed by a shower of questions. We smoothly turned to hands on using reputable machines (Mindary dc70) + (Mindary dp50) and General Electric. We started with normal demonstration on the big screen asking them in turn to take part on the examination. Overall performance was reasonable.
At 5:30pm we concluded the day. Our group was entertained by outdoor party in one of the residential hotels.
The 2nd day was similar apart from influx of unregistered candidates. Ghaidaa has talked in depth of body fluids and the kidney as she did previously successfully with pancreas, lymph nodes & the spleen. On the third day, we fulfilled a previous request of the Orthopedic surgeons to include musculoskeletal lecture on the workshop. Munzir has relayed the message perfectly, the act was followed by live training of the small team.
We concluded the course by examining some difficult cases prepared by the consultants. Then we distributed a test exam among participants. Overall performance was average. Those who scored higher marks received, in turn, one terra hard disc followed by 64GB flashdrive then followed by power bank.
