Assessing a tertiary surgical units readiness to offer a fellowship in burn care in Africa

Abstract

• The number of patients presenting with burn wound injuries in Africa continues to rise. • To adequately deal with such an increase, clinicians trained in burn care becomes essential. • This can be accomplished by a fellowship training program in burn care, which does not exist in Africa. • Such programs are well established in developed countries. • We aimed to review the services we offer in our tertiary burn unit matched against the criteria recommended by the American Burn Association for the provision of fellowship in burn care. • Ability to offer such a fellowship in our setting will contribute towards the training of experts who will develop burn care services all across Africa. The number of patients presenting with burn injuries in Africa is increasing [1,2], and these injuries can have devastating outcomes [3,4]. One contributing factor to these outcomes is the lack of adequately trained staff in providing expert burn wound care. There is little emphasis on training staff in caring for burn patients in Africa. Our goal was to assess the services offered at a specialized burn unit in South Africa and compare them to the recommendations of the American Burn Association for providing fellowship training in burn care. Establishing such a fellowship program will help train experts who can improve burn care services across Africa.