FHA Trauma Team started in 2009 (then called Kenya Orthopaedic Project) to help provide free surgical care for patients with broken bones and traumatic injuries in rural Kenya. We seek to work collaboratively with hospitals to enhance the delivery of trauma and orthopaedic care and services.  

Why is the Trauma Team needed?

• Skills shortage – Skills in Orthopaedic trauma and limb reconstruction within the Government sector are sparse throughout many parts of Africa.

• Financial environment – Orthopaedic surgery is expensive, and with an average wage of £1 per day, many patients with traumatic injuries just cannot afford the necessary treatment and are left with permanent pain and disability, often no longer able to provide for their families.

• The work is not being covered by other charities – Orthopaedic partnerships with low income countries are not common due to extremely high costs and difficulties in finding, financing and transporting instruments and specialist equipment.

Future Health Africa’s vision is ‘Sharing skills, transforming lives’.  We believe that creating a sustainable trauma and orthopaedic service is key to improving the health of the local population. We are committed to two-way teaching and learning in all our projects. This is achieved by working side by side with the doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals sharing and transferring mutual skills.

CATEGORISING OUR ACTIVITY

Trauma Team activities are categorised into Bronze, Silver and Gold activity levels.  All services are delivered at the highest standard, with improving quality as a central aim.

Bronze: Providing immediate and direct patient care

• Offer high quality consultations, advice and where appropriate, both operative and non-operative treatment for patients referred to us.

Silver: Facilitate learning opportunities/new skills for the future

• Side by side working with exchange of knowledge and skills

• Develop a safer surgical environment.

• Anaesthesia: Exchange knowledge on safe anaesthesia, regional anaesthesia and pain management

Gold: Trauma service sustainable improvement/development

• Identify areas to develop a stepwise pathway

• Support local need and wishes to change

• Develop non-operative treatment options for local patients

• Ongoing support and communication outside of projects 

We typically spend six days working with the local hospital team to see patients for consultations, to perform surgical operations and to provide physiotherapy or give advice. Almost all the patients we treat have had an injury which has not healed properly and has left them with a disability. Often these patients are unable to walk or use an arm. We have placed a strong emphasis on continuous rehabilitation, follow-up and audit of practice to ensure safe and effective patient management.

Ayub

Ayub is a retired gentleman and a year before we met him he had an operation to fix a broken right knee cap. The knee did not recover well and unfortunately became very stiff. It was stuck in an almost completely straight position. For him this made it impossible to kneel to pray, use public transport easily or climb hills or stairs easily. We were able to operate and remove the scar tissue from the knee. Here at the end of the operation you can see how well the knee moves and a few days later Ayub was able to start using the knee more normally.

Hamitha

Hamitha was 11 when we met her. She had injured her left elbow 6 months before and broken the humerus bone. Sadly the elbow did not recover well and she was left with a very stiff arm with the elbow stuck in an almost completely straight position which did not allow her to get her hand to her mouth or do any of life’s normal tasks with it. We were able to operate and remove the scar tissue from the elbow allowing her to begin to use the arm more normally again.

Donations

The financial cost of Orthopaedic surgery is prohibitive for most patients and their families.

Many patients are not able to pay for surgery which would give a child the chance to walk or enable a parent to return to work and provide for their family.

The cost of each of our Trauma Team project visits is approximately £16,000. Travel and accommodation costs for volunteers makes up 75% of that figure (and is mostly raised through fundraising by individual volunteers), whilst provision of equipment, implants and drugs makes up the remaining 25%.

Would you like to make a difference in the life of someone in need? Why not consider helping a needy patient today by donating towards an Orthopaedic implant. The impact of your donation would transform the life of someone in desperate need. Your donation could help to buy:

• An Implant to fix a child’s broken femur or tibia (£20)

• A surgical wire to stabilise a child’s broken elbow (£10)

• A standard plate and screws for fracture fixation (£30)

• External fixator rods and clamps which will be used repeatedly for fracture fixation (£400)

• The reusable instruments needed to implant a bone plate (£500)

DONATIONS can be easily made via kind link at https://donate.kindlink.com/Future-Health-Africa/4942

Volunteer with THE FHA Trauma Team

Our volunteering ethos – all volunteers donate their time and contribute financially to the delivery of the project. All members work closely together to deliver the highest quality of care.

A typical Trauma Team includes professionals such as Orthopaedic Surgeons, Anaesthetists, Theatre practitioners, Radiographers, Physiotherapist as well as a coordinator. 

We usually carry out two Trauma Team projects every year, each lasting 10 days. 

There are also opportunities to volunteer in the UK to help with the large amount of work required to run the project.

If you’re interested in volunteering, please contact  traumateam@futurehealthafrica.org  

• Visit our volunteer page for the handbook and agreement volunteer documents

• Organise or participate in a charity fundraising event

Anaesthesia 

Without anaesthesia there is no surgery! Access to safe surgery goes hand in hand with safe anaesthesia and is a human right. 

We work with local Anaesthetists to develop and improve local services through listening and learning.  Regional anaesthesia is a particular area that with development can provide safe, pain free anaesthesia and post-operative analgesia. This can best be achieved by the use of ultrasound. 

We take trainee Anaesthetists from the South West with the aim of two way exchange in ideas and teaching.  We recognise training the new Anaesthetists of the future in both countries provides benefits to all.  We hope to inspire others into the profession as there is a massive shortage of Anaesthetists across all low and middle income countries.

Surgery

Patients who need an operation for their fractured bone often cannot afford to pay for the surgery. Even if they can afford it they often have to travel long distances to have their broken bone assessed. 

We work side by side with Kenyan surgeons nurses and  junior doctors to exchange knowledge and skills. Where possible we donate implants such as the plates and screws needed to fix a broken bone so that patients don’t have to pay. We don’t charge fees for our work. We will try and let nature heal fractures without surgery but some fractures will simply not heal on their own leaving patients severely disabled.

Doctors who are training to be specialists in trauma surgery join us from the UK and Kenya for our visits. On average we will provide an assessment for around 300 patients and will operate on 20-30 patients a week.

Radiography

The radiographer on the team looks after the medical imaging needs of the orthopaedic surgeons  primarily. This will sometimes involve ensuring that the patients have had the correct images taken before an operation can be planned, or taking images after the operation to ensure that everything is in the right position to heal correctly. 

We also have an important part to play during the operations themselves. Using a machine called a Mobile Image Intensifier it is possible to take live, real time, x-rays in theatre whilst the patient is being operated on. This means that the surgeons can be certain at the time they are operating that screws, nails and plates etc are correctly sized and positioned and that the fragments of bone are in the right place and in alignment. This massively helps to reduce the risk to the patients of the long term effects of poorly healing breaks, and badly aligned limbs.

During both of these roles we like to work alongside the local Radiography Staff, teaching them techniques they may not have seen before, and learning from them ideas and procedures for getting the best out of the limited resources that they have.

Theatre team

The theatre team consists of registered practitioners who are Nurses or Operating Department Practitioners, and also includes Theatre Health Care Assistants with an interest in orthopaedic and trauma theatre environment, providing teamwork and knowledge in the scrub and anaesthetic practitioner roles.  Emphasis is based around the knowledge and skills exchange within the partnership of the local team, by working together side by side, facilitating the goals of helping to create a trauma service for their hospital and community.

Working side by side is a great opportunity to get to know our new friends and colleagues with similar roles, making an engaging setting to enable learning of new surgical and anaesthetic techniques they may not already be familiar with. It also provides reassurance and encourages good practice by promoting and contributing to a safe surgical environment set out by the World Health Organisation and the Lancet Global Surgery.

WHO Safe Surgery Guidelines

Lancet Global Surgery Guidelines

Christoph McAllen,
UK-based Trauma Team Lead Surgeon

Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon, University Hospitals Plymouth, UK and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Nairobi Department of Orthopaedics.

My first visit to Kenya as an Orthopaedic surgeon was in 2011. Since then I have returned for one or two visits per year. Each year and each visit brings new challenges and rewards. 

I value the new friendships both professional and personal that these trips have given me. When back at home in my day job in Plymouth I can draw on my experiences in Kenya and I know that my patients in the UK benefit from that. 

Trauma Team is developing fast. If you want to be a part of it please get in touch!

Dr Samuel Ndanya
Kenya-based Trauma Team Lead Surgeon

I am an Orthopaedic & Trauma Surgeon in Laikipia, Kenya. In 2008 whilst a surgeon at Nanyuki District Hospital, I met Dr Lucy Obolensky from Torbay in Devon. Lucy had been helping to improve access to primary healthcare for Maasai communities in Laikipia and Samburu areas of the Rift Valley in Kenya since 1997.

I asked Lucy if she could organise an orthopaedic trauma project to come from the UK to Nanyuki District Hospital. This first trauma project led to the formation of a partnership with Torbay Hospital and the charity Future Health Africa. I continue to work closely with the charity as the Kenyan Trauma Team Lead Surgeon.