The ASA Committee on Global Humanitarian Outreach (GHO) is involved in a variety of projects, but anesthesiology training in Rwanda has been a particularly important focus for many years. ASA collaborates with the International Education Foundation of the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CASIEF) in this long-term project that sends physician anesthesiologists to Rwanda each month to help train residents. Recently, an additional effort has been initiated: a project to help improve practice safety of anesthesia technicians who work independently in district hospitals and, therefore, provide the vast majority of the anesthetics in the country.
Anesthesia technicians have no more than three years training after high school; they also have virtually no opportunity for continuing education. Cesarean sections are the most common procedure performed in the district hospitals where they work. Maternal mortality in Rwanda is almost 20 times as high as in the U.S. Observations in a large district hospital showed...