Objective
Obstetrical and abdominal emergencies, and trauma, much of it affecting children, represent a major and neglected part of Africa’s burden of disease. Countries cannot train and retain sufficient specialist surgeons (doctors) to address these priorities. We propose a surgical training intervention targeted at Clinical officers (COs), who are trained non-physician clinicians that form the backbone of Africa’s district hospital services. Lacking medical degrees, COs have fewer opportunities for emigration. Surgical training of non-clinician physicians has been tried and reportedly worked well in African countries. It has never been rigorously evaluated, nor been subject to economic and population impact assessments. Two different 2 year training models are proposed: district hospital in-service training in Malawi and centralised training in Zambia. Before-and-after and randomized controlled trial evaluations are planned. The latter is the strongest study design for evaluating an intervention. Outcomes will include direct health benefits to patients, including morbidity and mortality averted; improved provider knowledge, skills and performance; direct (surgical) and indirect (management and other services) improvements in district hospital performance. Cost-effectiveness analyses and population impact assessments will be conducted.
Clinical Officer training has for long been a feasible and acceptable model to African national policy makers; and COST-Africa has already elicited high level expressions of support. There will be an ongoing interaction with national stakeholders in both countries to ensure attractive career paths, salaries and retention strategies are in place for the graduates. A proven model for training and retaining a new cadre of non-physician surgical officers has the potential to provide a standard of life-saving surgical care often denied to African populations; tackle major rural:urban inequities; and transform district hospital care. Without such a resource, Africa has no hope of reaching MDG 5 on maternal mortality; and reduced hope for MDG 4 on childhood mortality.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- social sciences sociology demography human migrations
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-AFRICA-2010
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
2 DUBLIN
Ireland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.