Developing and transferring a children’s surgical training program from India to Africa a south-to-south global initiative
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In brief
In brief
This article describes a south-to-south global surgery initiative where pediatric surgical trainers from India developed and transferred a district hospital training program to six African countries. The train-the-trainer model equipped specialist teams to deliver children's surgical education in resource-limited settings, addressing shared challenges of access and workforce capacity across lower middle-income countries.
- Hub-and-spoke model trains district hospital teams (surgeons, anesthetists, nurses) in pediatric surgery using tertiary center expertise.
- South-to-South collaboration addresses shared challenges: disease burden, limited access, infrastructure gaps, and workforce shortages.
- Train-the-trainer approach enables African specialist teams to replicate the course in their own countries with government support.
- District hospital adult surgical teams can be upskilled to provide children's surgical care in resource-limited settings.
- Vellore-developed training model successfully transferred to six African countries, demonstrating scalability across continents.
Written by the GCMD Library team from the article.
Abstract
Purpose
The availability of children’s surgical care in lower middle-income countries is lacking. The authors describe a hub and spoke global training initiative in children’s surgery for adult teams from district hospitals (spokes) comprising general and orthopaedic surgeons, anaesthetists, and nurses and specialist children’s surgical trainers from tertiary centres (hubs) in delivering the course.
Methods
The training course developed in Vellore, trained several sets of district hospital adult teams and trainer teams in India. Six specialist children’s surgical trainer teams were invited from African countries to the course delivered in Vellore, India. The aim was to train them to deliver the course in their countries.
Results
Participants underwent a precourse ‘train the trainer’ program, observed and assessed the suitability of the district hospital training course. The program received positive feedback, government supported planning of similar courses in some of the countries and discussions in others.
Conclusion
The availability of children’s surgical care is similarly limited in the Asian and African continent, and the regions have shared challenges of disease burden, lack of access, poverty, deficient infrastructure, and trained human resources. They would benefit from this ‘South to South’ collaboration to impart training skills and modules to the children’s surgical trainers.