FELLOWSHIP IN PAEDIATRIC EMERGENCY AND CRITICAL CARE

Overview

Objective of the Programme 

The Fellowship in Paediatric Emergency and Critical Care is a Clinical Fellowship Program intended to equip Paediatricians with highly specialized clinical knowledge and practical skills, essential for the evaluation and management of acutely and critically ill children in both urban and rural centres, to internationally recognized standards.

Philosophy

Ninety percent of critical illness and paediatric mortality worldwide occurs in resource-poor settings. Every day 17,000 children under the age of 5 years die. The majority of these deaths occurs inSub-Saharan Africa and is due to preventable and treatable illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, and 87% of in-patient deaths in these settings occur within the first 24 hours of hospital admission. In accordance with the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child to which Kenya is a signatory, every child has a right to good health care, and the right to live. In order to provide critically ill children in Kenya and beyond high quality emergency and critical care there is need to equip specialists with the requisite emergency and critical care skills, as well as capability to provide leadership in the management of critical and emergency care units in hospitals across the country. 

Rationale of the Programme

As of 2016, there were only 4 trained Paediatric Critical Care doctors in Kenya, serving a population of 17 million children below 14 years of age.There are presently no Kenyan Paediatricians with sub-specialist training in Paediatric Emergency Medicinein the country. In the entire continent of Africa there are only two training centres in Paediatric Critical Care, in Egypt and South Africa, and there are no training centres in Paediatric Emergency medicine in Africa. There is urgent need for a Paediatric Emergency and Critical Care training programme to serve the Central, West and East African region and provide expertise that goes beyond the training and skills of general Paediatricians. 

The development of subspecialists within the field of Paediatrics is a demonstration of the ongoing advancements in medical education.Stakeholder consultation with Medical licensing bodies, the health delivery sector (public and private), and Paediatric Professional Associations provided valuable input in the development of a sub-specialty fellowship program adapted to regional need.A training program in Paediatric Emergency and Critical Care in Kenya is in line with the social arm of Kenya’s Vision 2030 whose aim is to ensure provision of an efficient andhigh quality health care service.  The Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Nairobi has the capacity to mount and sustain this programmein collaboration with Paediatric Intensivists and PaediatricEmergency physicians around the world.  This fellowship programmein Paediatric Emergency and Critical Careis expected to allow for appropriate training within an East African setting whose challenges include: delayed patient presentation, resource-limitation, and poor health care infrastructure for the critically-ill child. It will provide both clinical and organizational skills to develop the acute and critical care health care systems in Kenya and neighboring region.