Project Overview

Welcome.

Thank you for visiting our Blog. You are here because you already know us or you've been referred by someone else because you share our interest. Please feel free to forward this URL to anyone who you feel may benefit, contribute, advise, or simply like to read about our experience. Lets begin with a brief description of our project and a very brief foray into why we believe our work is not only important to Afghanistan itself, but for the developing world at large and health care delivery as a whole.

 

Project: An Assessment of Emergency and Acute Care in Afghanistan in the Current Conflict Setting.

Afghanistan’s healthcare has suffered tremendously after decades of war and civil unrest. The country is currently entrenched in an insurgency that is fueled by social problems- including lack of access to basic healthcare services. The current US strategy of Counter Insurgency and State Building seeks to diminish these gaps in an effort to curb terrorism and promote sustainable peace and growth.

  

One of the key focal points is that of actual health care delivery. Afghanistan has the some of the world’s worst health indicators and recognized as such, the major donor organizations such as USAID and the World Bank implemented what is known as the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS). The BPHS seeks to address key areas such as mass vaccinations, infectious diseases such as HIV/TB and Malaria, and Maternal and child mortality.

We are currently in Kabul, spending our days in clinics and intermittently implementing our project.

Our goal is to use an evidence based approach to help identify gaps at the initial phase of patient interaction. Local physicians and healthcare workers have no formal training in Emergency Medicine and each hospital has a unique approach to the triage of patients--with or without receiving initial evaluation. Our work will seek to assess the capacity of Primary as well as Local Healthcare Providers’ to deliver acute resuscitation and stabilization as well as their capacity to transfer to definitive care through a series of surveys, small group discussions with physicians and nurses that staff these emergency departments, as well as personal observation.

As previously mentioned, the BPHS addresses some basic healthcare needs of Afghans. The BPHS is unique in that it is the first of its kind being implemented in a conflict region and has the philosophy of delivering healthcare as a human right. We hope that our work in Emergency Medicine can compliment the goals of BPHS, and expand to other regions of the health sector and eventually other countries.