5 minute read
MESSAGE FROM THE MEDICAL UNIT
Dr Claire Fotheringham
Head of Medical Unit
Médecins Sans Frontières Australia
In 2021 the Medical Unit contributed to improvements in care for women’s health, paediatrics and paediatric nursing, and sexual violence care by continuing to invest in new packages of care, staff and research.
After the sense that globally we were all going through the COVID-19 pandemic together in 2020, 2021 was a year of divergence. Although COVID-19 vaccines became available, access to them was far from equal or equitable. People’s experiences were very different based on where they lived, and their access to healthcare overall continued to be compromised.
On the other hand, the pandemic had an equalising effect by showing that teams didn’t need to be physically located in the same place to work effectively. In Médecins Sans Frontières, sharing knowledge online also became an important tool to empower our operational colleagues in their practice.
For the Medical Unit we also seized the moment to reorganise and become more diverse. We now have more than half the team located outside Australia working in places closer to Médecins Sans Frontières projects.
Placing patients at the centre of everything we do
A year ago I shared with you how we had implemented a “simple package” for treatment of the serious and chronic blood disorder sickle cell disease in our project in Madarounfa, Niger. Sickle cell disease is particularly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, often deadly in young children. One year on it’s exciting to report that the project has stepped up to a higher level with an advanced package of care through its introduction of a key medicine: hydroxyurea. Thanks to careful planning under the guidance of our paediatric advisors, the Madarounfa team can now offer a treatment regimen with hydroxyurea that reduces sickle cell-related crisis events and improves survival—an important achievement for everyone involved.
In 2021 we also started to see the fruits of our important research project into abortion-related morbidity (illness) and mortality (death), the AMoCo study, which we commenced in 2017. The first study of its type to be conducted in fragile and conflict-affected settings, it completed data collection this past year, and we’ll be reporting the results in 2022. We look forward to adapting our care, and influencing others to do the same, in response to what we and our study partners learn about the experience of women and this neglected healthcare need.
Strengthening our teams
Developing and supporting staff is an important goal in our strategic plan, and an essential one for improving quality of care. One example in 2021 was the launch of an internal knowledge base and community of practice for sexual violence care, to promote collective knowledge-sharing and collaborative learning across the worldwide operations of Médecins Sans Frontières.
Although Médecins Sans Frontières continues to try to avoid silos in our medical approach, we have six operational centres, and typically communities of practice are attached to an individual centre. So it was very exciting to have the sexual violence care advisors from all centres collaborating on this through its inception and development. Now we have a curated knowledge base and moderated space where practitioners in our field project teams can share experiences about implementation and learn from each other. This was a very big project and it was very rewarding to see early signs of engagement after the launch.
Promoting the role of nurses and strengthening nursing care are also part of our strategic goals, and in 2021 our paediatric and neonatal nursing advisor, along with her international colleagues, developed and implemented two important nursing resources as part of the new Neonatal Nursing Care Package: the Neonatal Injectable Medication Handbook and the Neonatal Nursing Care Handbook. Resources such as these enable us to share up-to-date, evidence-based practice with our nurses and nursing care providers and ensure the delivery of quality nursing care to our patients and their families as the years continue.
Looking ahead
With COVID-19 vaccines and boosters available and borders opening up again in 2022, we look forward to working in person with colleagues, visiting projects and renewing our bonds. At the same time we’ll be able to take advantage of what we’ve learned about working remotely as effective and impactful teams, especially as we bring on new team members in different locations. This includes a second full-time midwife (joining one of our paediatricians in Dakar, Senegal), to increase the amount of midwifery advice we can provide for our projects in the women’s health portfolio. Our obstetrician will continue to provide their expertise in complications of pregnancy and support the midwives, but by strengthening our midwifery advisor team we will be able to double our work on respectful maternity care, patient-centred care and quality of care for the mother-baby dyad.
Sadly, in 2022 we say farewell to a longstanding member of the Medical Unit, sexual violence care advisor Margaret Bell. She has done amazing work in a neglected area of care. She has also contributed hugely to Médecins Sans Frontières Australia as a whole. We share our best wishes for her new ventures.
