Clinical Capacity Building Through Partnerships: Boots on the Ground in Global Neurosurgery.

Global neurosurgery seeks to provide quality neurosurgical health care worldwide and faces challenges because of historical, socioeconomic, and political factors. To address the shortfall of essential neurosurgical procedures worldwide, dyads between established neurosurgical and developing centers have been established. Concerns have been raised about their effectiveness and ability to sustain capacity development. Successful partnerships involve multiple stakeholders, extended timelines, and twinning programs. This article outlines current initiatives and challenges within the neurosurgical community. This narrative review aims to provide a practical tool for colleagues embarking on clinical partnerships, the Engagements and assets, Capacity, Operative autonomy, Sustainability, and scalability (ECOSystem) of care. To create the ECOSystem of care in global neurosurgery, the authors had multiple online discussions regarding important points in the practical tool. All developed tiers were expanded based on logistics, clinical, and educational aspects. An online search was performed from August to November 2023 to highlight global neurosurgery partnerships and link them to tiers of the ECOSystem. The ECOSystem of care involves 5 tiers: Tiers 0 (foundation), 1 (essential), 2 (complexity), 3 (autonomy), and 4 (final). A nonexhaustive list of 16 neurosurgical partnerships was created and serves as a reference for using the ECOSystem. Personal experiences from the authors through their partnerships were also captured. We propose a tiered approach for capacity building that provides structured guidance for establishing neurosurgical partnerships with the ECOSystem of care. Clinical partnerships in global neurosurgery aim to build autonomy, enabling independent provision of quality healthcare services.

Neurosurgery Education and Development program to treat hydrocephalus and to develop neurosurgery in Africa using mobile neuroendoscopic training.

OBJECT A shortage of neurosurgeons and a lack of knowledge of neuroendoscopic management of hydrocephalus limits modern care in sub-Saharan Africa. Hence, a mobile teaching project for endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) procedures and a subsequent program to develop neurosurgery as a permanent specialty in Kenya and Zanzibar were created and sponsored by the Neurosurgery Education and Development (NED) Foundation and the Foundation for International Education in Neurological Surgery. The objective of this work was to evaluate the results of surgical training and medical care in both projects from 2006 to 2013. METHODS Two portable neuroendoscopy systems were purchased and a total of 38 ETV workshops were organized in 21 hospitals in 7 different countries. Additionally, 49 medical expeditions were dispatched to the Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya, and to the Mnazi Moja Hospital in Zanzibar. RESULTS From the first project, a total of 376 infants with hydrocephalus received surgery. Six-month follow-up was achieved in 22%. In those who received follow-up, ETV efficacy was 51%. The best success rates were achieved with patients 1 year of age or older with aqueductal stenosis (73%). The main causes of hydrocephalus were infection (56%) and spina bifida (23%). The mobile education program interacted with 72 local surgeons and 122 nurses who were trained in ETV procedures. The second project involved 49 volunteer neurosurgeons who performed a total of 360 nonhydrocephalus neurosurgical operations since 2009. Furthermore, an agreement with the local government was signed to create the Mnazi Mmoja NED Institute in Zanzibar. CONCLUSIONS Mobile endoscopic treatment of hydrocephalus in East Africa results in reasonable success rates and has also led to major developments in medicine, particularly in the development of neurosurgery specialty care sites.

Mobile endoscopy: a treatment and training model for childhood hydrocephalus.

BACKGROUND: Hydrocephalus, largely a disease of poverty in many developing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, becomes even more challenging to treat because of lack of trained neurosurgical personnel, inadequately equipped public health care facilities, meager resource allocation, high rates of neonatal infection, difficulty of access to tertiary care hospitals able to treat hydrocephalus, and high complication rates in patients who are able to access and receive shunting procedures. Furthermore, conventional methods of training of neurosurgeons and nursing staff to become proficient in neuroendoscopic procedures involve a lengthy period of training, often at specialized centers in Western or local Western-style institutions. METHODS: The novel approach promoted by volunteer neurosurgical teams from Neurosurgery Education Development Foundation is described, and its potential role in successfully providing neuroendoscopic ventriculostomy at hospitals in regional sites away from main referral tertiary hospitals is outlined. The impact on the training of local neurosurgical specialists and residents in training as well as nursing staff is highlighted. RESULTS: With the use of a single portable neuroendoscopy system and a versatile free-hand, single-operator neuroendoscope, this outreach, mobile, and readily portable model has been successfully used to perform more than 250 procedures in 21 different hospital sites around seven different countries in two continents. The local courses have imparted hands-on training to 62 neurosurgeons and trainee residents and a further 110 operating room nurses at these 21 institutions. CONCLUSIONS: Neuroendoscopy is not only a priority surgical tool for East Africa. It offers a medical philosophy as an application that serves as an art and a science dedicated to the development of a complex surgical specialty: neurosurgery.

History of neurosurgery in Kenya, East Africa.

Neurosurgery, in one form or another, has a long tradition in Kenya. Early skull trepanations in Kenya were reported by previous studies, which reveal that these procedures have a long tradition, being passed down from generation to generation. Modern neurosurgical development in Kenya has its origins in the late 1940s when the first elective neurosurgical procedures were performed by Dr. J. F. Jarvis, Chief of Head and Neck Surgery at the now Kenyatta National Hospital, when he operated on anterior encephaloceles, and later also performed anterior third ventriculostomies for hydrocephalus. Formal neurosurgery developed from these initial steps, with the arrival of the first trained specialist, Dr. Renato Ruberti, whose pioneering efforts resulted in the founding of the Neurological Society of Kenya (NSK), the Pan African Association of Neurological Sciences (PAANS), and the African Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (AFNS). The last quarter of the 20th century has seen the progress of neurosurgery reach its present respectable levels, with dedicated and well-trained Kenyan neurosurgical specialists focusing not only on its practice but diligently pursuing its development.