Offsetting environmental impact

We are all too aware that flying around the world damages the environment and we need to balance the good that our training and quality improvement programmes do in terms of saving lives and reducing long term injury, against the harms caused by travel.

We believe that training is best delivered locally, by local staff in the local language. We train trainers in Basic and Essential Burn Care and hand over all materials to our partners in Asia, Africa and the Middle East so that they can take these forward.

The restrictions imposed by COVID-19 have shown that we can all travel less and meet efficiently online, and we are looking hard at many of our programmes with this in mind. Here are some ways we are tackling this pressing global issue:

• Essential Burn Care is available online for free. Students from Kathmandu Medical College are using it as part of their studies during the lockdown and healthcare staff from many countries consult it for knowledge on burn care.

• We are proud to support the Kenya Reforestation Project that works with local communities to restore natural habitat. You can read about it here.

• Our network of Interburns’ Training Centres (ITCs) in India, Nepal and South Africa can provide longer term fellowships in burn care in a low resource setting. Applications are currently on hold but the form is available on the website for download.

• We are excited to be looking at ways to develop a digital version of the Delivery Assessment Tools (DAT) and Primary Assessment Tool (PAT) so that many more burn units around the world can self-assess and steer quality improvements against international standards.

We would like to hear from you if you think you can support or contribute to any of these efforts.