MF joins United Nations (UNFPA) in Mansa

In November Mercy Flyers partnered with the UNFPA to carry out a combined fistula surgery outreach in the town of Mansa in Luapula province, Northern Zambia. We see this as an exciting development in our efforts to form a more cohesive approach to the management of this distressing condition in this country. The benefit of this combined outreach is that each team can learn from the other and combine resources in recruiting and managing patients with fistula. Dr Craig Oranmore-Brown taught 3 anaesthetic clinical officers how to use spinal anaesthesia for this surgery which significantly reduces the cost of anaesthesia at the same time as improving the safety of anaesthesia.

We operated on 44 patients of whom 35 had a fistula. One of our patients had suffered from a fistula for 45 years!

We look forward to further combined outreaches next year. We have made an agreement with the Ministry of Health to be recognised for training of Gynaecology registrars on our outreaches. A registrar from the University Teaching Hospital attended the combined outreach and received training from both consultants present. We hope that we will have a registrar on all our future outreaches. Training of Gynaecologists in the skill of fistula surgery is a pressing need, as this surgery is complicated and requires specialised training.