By Chinedu Adonu

SmileTrain in collaboration with National Surgical Obstetrics and Anaesthesia and Nursing Plan for Nigeria, NSOANP, have commenced training of surgeons, anaesthesists and paediatricians on basic live support and paediatric advanced live support.

The 5 days capacity building workshop at National Orthopedic hospital Enugu for medical practitioners in the South East zone, which commenced today, 25th to end 29th, May 2021, aimed at training them on how to resuscitate and give adequate response to patients.

Speaking during the training, Lead instructor of the training, Enugu zone, Dr Akitoye Olymide of University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, disclosed that 24 doctors have been selected across health institutions in the South East to be trained on basic live support and paediatric live support to be able to save patients during emergency.

“The NSOANP and SmileTrain are empowering the medical practitioner on resuscitation skills basically basic live support and paediatric support to be able to resuscitate and respond to patients adequately.

“The training will be done in the six geopolitical zone where 12 doctors will be trained on basic live support and the other 12 will be trained on paediatric live support.

“The first day of the training will be on live support, where 12 participants will be trained because it’s an essential skill that even non medical personnel should have to be able to save patients in case of emergency.

“Emergency can be at the banking hall, road side, market or wherever, so that we will be able to resucitate our patients. On the second day we will also do another basic support, making it 24 doctors, while the paediatric advance live support will take the remaining 3 days.

“So, that is why the 12 that will be coming for the second basic live support will be the one to progress to receive training on paediatric live support. At the end we will have 24 basic live support and 12 Paediatric love support.

“The participants will have American certificate after the training and will go back to their various institution to extend the training to as many as they could but that does not mean they are certified. We will later bring the nurses and other health worker and train them especially in basic live support.

“However, the medical practitioners that works with children will be equipped with paediatric advance live support, so that they can continue to deliver the service pending when another training will be organised and more people will be trained.

“This is the right step in a right direction. We are hoping that after this training the service delivery in the healthcare will be improved. The training will help us to focus on whatever we are doing as SmileTrain has provided us with some equipments which will help in providing services to our patients”, He said.

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He applauded SmileTrain for training and providing what their partnering institution does not have to provide adequate health-care delivery.

One of the participants, a paediatric Cardiologist in the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Ijeoma Arodiwe, hailed the American organisation, SmileTrain for organizing the training, stressing that it would go along way to improve health service delivery in South East.

She disclosed that at the end of training they would be more productively in providing response to Cardiacarest and patients being threaten by life event and reduce mortality rate.

“Today we are undergoing training on how to provide basic live support and resuscitate our patients. The training will sharpen our skills and give us more responsiveness”, She said.

A plastic surgeon of National Orthopedic hospital Enugu and South East coordinator of SmileTrain, Dr, Ifeanyichukwu Onah, said that SmileTrain is partnering NSOANP to train medical practitioners on basic live support and paediatric advance live support because they regard safety as number one priority.