Africa Heart Foundation strongly feels that the only way of sustain cardiovascular services is to invest in teaching and training of local medical, nursing and ancillary staff. This is our mission aim and we will achieve this while concurrently providing a service.
Africa Heart Foundation will be based in the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. This location has been carefully selected because of its existing infrastructure. Its advantages include proximity to major road/rail networks, international and domestic airports within few miles and the highway to the key port city of Mombasa, which handles almost all sea imports for East Africa.
Africa Heart Foundation headquarters has been planned to house the administrative buildings alongside a state-of-the-art teaching centre with wet-labs to allow pre-selected trainee surgeons to develop their skills on animal and computer-generated models in controlled surroundings. The teaching centre will contain an auditorium, smaller tutorial rooms and a post-graduate library complete with computers and high-speed internet connections to world-class institutions. There are plans to develop a specialist nursing college dedicated to the post-graduate critical cardiac care and primary care prevention. We will also cater for allied medical and other specialities crucial to the success of any cardiovascular programme. These include a heart-lung perfusion department, haematological, physiotherapy and pharmaceutical sciences amongst others. All specialities will be linked to internationally recognised regulatory bodies and follow a curriculum approved and endorsed by local universities and colleges.
Africa Heart Foundation trustees do not feel that it is financially viable to invest in the capital cost building a cardiovascular hospital with intensive care facilities. There are several existing establishments within the sub-Saharan region that require appropriately trained cardiovascular staff and in some circumstances minimal equipment to start a local cardiovascular programme. Moreover, we do not feel that poor self-funding patients should travel extensive distances, often in foreign countries in the case of cardiac surgery, to undergo the procedure. Instead, we will be offering the open-heart surgery in a hospital local to them using their own local doctors and nursing staff. This staff would have already spent a period of time during residential training at our facility in Nairobi and obtained the necessary qualifications. Cardiologists from a hospital participating in our programme will have selected the patients for surgery and the local trainee surgeon affiliated to our establishment will then make a formal assessment in preparation for surgery. Africa Heart Foundation trainers (surgeon, anaesthetist, perfusionist, theatre and intensive care nurses) will then travel to the local hospital with the Mobile Operating Units (MOU) which are key to the success of this mission. These trailers contain all the necessary equipment for 10 cases of open-heart surgery. Over a period of 5-7 days, the local surgeon and nurses will put into practice what he/she has learnt at our residential course under direct supervision and scrutiny of our training staff.
Africa Heart Foundation is currently equipping its first trailers in UK and anticipates 3 Mobile Operating Units running out of its base into surrounding hospitals by the end of 2010.
