Urology Mission Trips to Ghana

The main focus of our association is to perform urological operations at the 6 Ghanaian hospitals we co-manage. In the course of this work, our teams have repeatedly encountered minor and major adversities of everyday life in the past, which made it very difficult for us to operate on and care for patients, and in some cases no longer possible. For example, due to repeated power outages, operations that had already been planned could not be carried out. We don't even want to talk about the dangers that arise for the patient in the event of power failures during an operation that has already begun. In order to ensure the best possible surgical result for the patient, however, appropriate framework conditions are required (in addition to a constant power supply) – equipping the operating theatres, preparing the patients before the operation (e.g. examination of corresponding laboratory values, availability of blood reserves in the event of enventually occurring bleeding) and ensuring sterile working conditions are a few examples that are essential for the success of our work.

In addition to the missions of our urological teams, the association has therefore also set itself the task of supporting the hospitals in improving working conditions on site. Since the projects we initiate are of course not exclusively intended to benefit our teams, close cooperation with our colleagues on site is also important to our association, because this is the only way our projects can bring long-term benefits to Ghanaian hospitals.

 

On-site operations and deployment planning

Our association Die Ärzte für Afrika e.V. supports the urological care of West African Ghana by completing about 12 missions a year at our 6 sponsor hospitals, as well as currently planning an assignment at Wenchi Hospital. More information about the 6 hospitals can be found here.

In the last 13 years, we have completed over 200 missions. In concrete terms, this means that we send a team consisting of 2 urologists and another team member (e.g. operating room nurse, assistant doctor) to the respective hospital to implement our projects. The missions usually last 18 days and take place between February and November. The main task on site is to treat patients with the appropriate operations. Therefore, specialist colleagues are particularly in demand for this job – we are always happy to have active members here. But we also want to attract young doctors to our association work and so experienced assistant doctors can support the team at any time.

At this point, we would like to give interested colleagues an overview of the prerequisites for active deployment in Ghana. Since our association sees the surgical care of patients onsite as its main task, it is necessary that both team members have basic operational knowledge and can perform the following operations safely and independently. Frequently performed procedures on our missions are: TUR prostate, TUR urinary bladder, open prostate adenomectomy, treatment of urethral strictures (endoscopic and open), procedures on the external male genitals, SPK systems, prostate punch biopsies.

Of course, it is also possible for specialists to be deployed without operating independently. After consultation, members of the association can then take care of the many other necessary tasks on site as a 3rd team member. This includes, above all, the further training of Ghanaian colleagues in issues such as hygiene and aftercare of patients.

Operational training in Ghana on the part of the association is not planned and not possible.

Furthermore, we would like to inform you at this point that our association can only organize urological missions. Unfortunately, we cannot implement inquiries from other disciplines (e.g. from anesthesiologists or internists).

If you are interested in active assignments in Ghana, please contact us – we will send you more information as soon as possible.

Applications planning

Erhard Rübsam is responsible for operational planning and is supported by Prof. Reinhold Horsch. Deployment planning usually begins at the beginning of the year for the following year.
Contact (please copy address in the sender line): [email protected]

Both colleagues work closely together and are available for you to answer any questions you may have in the area of specialist scheduling. The planning always takes place in consultation with the respective hospitals and team members and can only be postponed to a limited extent due to local conditions such as harvest times or important holidays. Therefore, we would like to ask you in advance to check the proposed dates well so that the number of follow-up plans can be kept within limits.

The e-mail address [email protected] is available as a contact person for interested assistant doctors. Assistant doctors from the 4th year of further training are welcome to work in Ghana. The missions of our assistant doctors are financially supported by the GeSRU. Currently, our colleagues at GeSRU provide us with 5 scholarships per year for this purpose. After completion of the assignment, the scholarship can be applied for using the form stored on our internal page. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the GeSRU for their support!

Contact: [email protected]