Asia Regional Hub develops
An Interburns team visited Nepal in November to further develop a strategy for an Asia Regional Hub. This builds on many years work in the country developing, piloting and implementing the comprehensive integrated approach to improving burn care including community burn prevention initiatives, advanced skills training for surgeons, nurses and physiotherapists, and service evaluations.
Having demonstrated the approach works – from reducing burn incidence at village level, to improving the quality of burn care at national level - Interburns seeks to disseminate the approach and replicate success, in the country and across the region. Key to this is a shared strategy that is developed in collaboration with stakeholders, and led from the region.
Partners, Sushma Koirala Memorial Hospital (SKMH) and Kirtipur Hospital, re affirmed their position as Interburns Training Centres (ITCs) ready to receive Interburns fellows. They also recently carried out Delivery Assessment Tool (DAT) evaluations which were reviewed.
The team met with several NGOs including Sagun, who have partnered with Interburns to successfully deliver burn prevention initiatives at community level, the Nepal Burn Society and Foundation, the Nick Simons Institute and Burn Victims Survivors (BVS), Nepal.
The team held fruitful talks with officers from the Ministry of Health (MoH) and National Health Training Centre (NHTC) about next steps, including a decision to focus on one province to demonstrate the comprehensive approach ahead of wider roll out. Interburns has drafted a strategy to be discussed and agreed upon by all parties.
The local offices of WHO and UNICEF were extremely supportive; we are particularly delighted that the WHO has offered to co-host an event bringing together all partners and stakeholders in March 2023.
We would like to give our thanks to all those who met with the Interburns team which included: Professor Tom Potokar, Tina Bajec, Dominique Potokar, Dr Andy Ferguson, Dr Rojina Shilpakar, Anil Dhital, Dr Kamal Puyal.