There are advantages to regional integration of medical services in the West African sub-region, Flying Doctors Nigeria has said.
Speaking in Banjul, The Gambia, during this year’s West African College of Surgeons (WACS) conference and scientific meeting, Flying Doctors Nigeria Founder Dr Ola Brown stated that regional integration would help to develop “medical centres of excellence that can receive large volumes of specialist medical cases”.
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She said the centres would help medical personnel to “develop expertise in very specific areas of medicine.” The WACS yearly meeting is one of the most-prestigious medical conferences in Africa. The conference was attended by surgeons from about 22 West African countries. This year’s conference had “Global surgery implementation for West Africa” as its theme.
Speaking further on international collaboration in the region, Brown said air ambulance services should be a key part of the region’s medical sector cooperation.
She said air ambulance services could enhance the region’s medical collaboration by “facilitating transportation of patients across large distances in very short timeframes”.
West Africa has some of the poorest health outcomes in the world in form of high maternal mortality rates, high child mortality rates and high mortality rates from trauma and infectious diseases like malaria. The healthcare expert said air ambulance services could help patients save lives by “circumventing the region’s infrastructural challenges, such as poorly maintained roads common in the region.”
Flying Doctors Nigeria is West Africa’s first and leading air ambulance service organisation based in Nigeria. Established almost 10 years ago, the firm airlifts patients across the world in medically-equipped aircraft for special treatment.
Brown said air ambulance services made it easier for medical experts to refer patients that could not be handled in their home countries to other countries in the sub-region where such ailments can effectively be treated.
She further said air ambulance services also served many professionals, especially those in oil and gas industry, who work in high-risk environments, making it compelling to have air ambulance services for rescue operations in hard-to-reach areas.
By: Oyeyemi Gbenga-Mustapha
The Nation News
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