Ivory Coast: The West African Postdoctoral Diploma of Paediatric Surgery
Programme Coordinator: Professor Yann Révillon
In 2013 Professor Tekou, chief of paediatric surgery, asked La Chaîne de l’Espoir to support the accreditation of a Postdoctoral Diploma of Paediatric Surgery by the West African Health Organisation (WAHO). In all of West Africa, only the universities of Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Lomé, Togo; and Dakar, Senegal offer a Postdoctoral Diploma of Paediatric Surgery recognised by the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES). It is urgent to standardise and improve the quality of available postdoctoral programmes in West African and Malagasy francophone countries with a view to reform CAMES’s accreditation criteria by coordinating with the WAHO. In this context, La Chaîne de l’Espoir brings the expertise of professors of paediatric surgery in its medical network to disciplines or postdoctoral programmes with a lack of qualified instructors. Since June 2014, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has been organising theoretical and practical training missions in partnership with the postdoctoral programmes in Abidjan and Lomé and proposes to extend access to these programmes to students enrolled in postdoctoral programmes in Dakar. These missions should facilitate an improvement in the quality of care and surgical treatment of children.
OBJECTIVES :
- To participate in the practical and theoretical instruction of paediatric surgeons-in-training within the context of the Postdoctoral Diploma of Paediatric Surgery in West Africa
- To support programmes offering a Postdoctoral Diploma of Paediatric Surgery in their efforts towards accreditation
ACTIVITY :
- Theoretical instruction in the form of seminars led by members of La Chaîne de l’Espoir in which students in the three countries and students enrolled from neighbouring countries— Beninese students in Togo for example— take part, either in person or via videoconferencing.
- Practical instruction in the form of missions carried out in the three countries
- 2 to 3 training missions carried out each year, alternately in each country
- First training mission; June 2014 in Lomé, Togo
- Two modules taught on each mission, one in orthopaedic surgery and the second in general surgery.
