Civil unrest affects healthcare in Cameroon

Posted on by niche_admin in Uncategorized
Jarlath at breakfast with Grace, Ernestine and Margaret, instructors from Bamenda

Because of the civil unrest in Cameroon, some participants from the North West and South West Regions, which are the worst affected by violence, had difficulty travelling.  There are weekly ‘ghost towns and ‘lock downs’ in these regions, when no shops or schools are open and there is no public transport.

Nurses and doctors are forced to sleep on the floor in the hospital at these times. Pregnant women have difficulty reaching hospitals and health centres.  Three instructors from Bamenda NW Region, where we ran the first course in 2014, managed to get to Yaounde to teach.

The baby who won’t live long

Posted on by niche_admin in Uncategorized

Cameroonian doctors and nurses were entirely responsible for the teaching on the course on this occasion. They rose to the challenge; time keeping being the only aspect which needs a bit of work still.  Stella, one of the younger teachers, gave an inspirational talk on ‘The baby who won’t live long’, which is one of the most challenging lectures on the course.

Hard for us to teach too, as many of the babies who fall into this category in Cameroon such as those with spina bifida or congenital heart disease, can be offered so much more in the UK.  The reality is that the Cameroonian instructors do have a better idea of how to make these babies comfortable and also have more experience of having to do this than the UK instructors.  It is yet another area where the UK instructors learn from our Cameroonian counterparts.

Stella teaching on the baby who won’t live long

Trainers undeterred by building works

Posted on by niche_admin in Uncategorized

Jarlath and Alison have been in Yaounde, Cameroon to support Cameroonian Instructors who were teaching on their first or second courses following their training as Newborn Care Instructors.

The courses were being run in the Cameroon Baptist Convention Resource Centre, in Mvan a suburb of Yaoundé.   This is a new centre, and building was still taking place on the site.  There was a big room for teaching on the 3rd floor, as well as a dining room and accommodation on site.

Teachers had to contend with hammering from the builders, tropical thunderstorms and the odd powercut, but were undeterred.

View from the teaching room as storm clouds gather
Building works next to the teaching room

 

Sustainability, here we come!

Posted on by niche_admin in Uncategorized

Julia recently spoke at a national conference on “The challenge of sustainability” in newborn care training.  NICHE International’s vision of the Holy Grail of sustainability is in the slide below:

There is much written on skills decay over time and the lack of sustainability in the model of flying outside instructors to a country for a week to teach resuscitation skills and expect attitudes and habits to change as a result. That is why we concentrate on training local instructors and have developed our 10-step path to sustainability (see under sustainability section of the website).  That is also why we are so excited about the course currently running in Yaounde, Cameroon.

These workshops and lectures are being delivered by people we trained as instructors last year:

Mentoring in Yaounde, Cameroon

Posted on by niche_admin in Uncategorized

This is Alison and Jarlath, busy in Cameroon mentoring 12 local instructors through their instructor candidate newborn care courses. We use the UK model for training instructors. They first have to do a two day very intense instructor training course known as the generic instructor course (GIC). Then they have to teach on 2 newborn care courses but are supervised during that time by a more senior instructor. At the end of this they are fully fledged newborn care course instructors. It is quite demanding training, the same as the UK advanced life support instructors go through, but is one of the best short instructor training courses available. The NICHE instructors are on site this week to complete the training of the 12 local instructors who did their generic instructor course this time last year. As a team, we are very heartened by this step. It is step 8 in our sustainability plan and means that we can remove ourselves from Cameroon for a few years. Step 9 and 10 will take place when the trained local instructors have done enough courses to start training as instructor trainers themselves. We hope to be invited back for that stage in two or three years time.