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SURG-Africa hosted an international forum on 'Improving Access to Safe Surgery: An Irish-African Research Partnership' on 28 May 2019, held at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), in Dublin. The event was in celebration of Africa Day, and research collaborations between RCSI and European and Africa partner institutions in surgical systems research in sub-Saharan Africa.

NDORMS is a research partner with RCSI on SURG-Africa, an EU Horizon 2020 research programme to scale up safe surgery at district level hospitals in Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia.

The event was attended by Prof Chris Lavy and Grace Le, SURG-Africa researchers at NDORMS. Prof Lavy spoke on the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery and the need for surgical systems research.

Professor Chris Lavy

Dr Tiyamike Kapalamula from Mercy James Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi, spoke on improving the quality and quantity of communication between district clinicians and specialists, and the impact of a managed clinical network whatsapp group for referrals.

Dr Tiyamike Kapalamula

Watch this video to find out more about how the whatsapp group for surgical teams has improved the referral system: 

Other topics discussed at the forum included the role of non-physician clinicians to increase patient access to safe surgery, task shifting/sharing, and economic research in global surgery for surgical systems strengthening. The event brought together academics, researchers, practitioners, policy makers and other stakeholders to share experiences and discuss the way forward.

Find out about the SURG-Africa study design here and visit http://www.surgafrica.eu/ for more research outputs from the study.