Child Surgeries Tanzania - Report - Page 42
Outcomes of the trip
a key role in maintaining the hospital and
ambassadorial contacts and quality.
1. From a review point of view - we feel comfortable
that the medical competency is there with 59 of
the 70 children reviewed as being good - meaning
three criteria have been met:
• Good health of child.
• Noticeable improvement in disability.
• Happy parents.
We are following up the other 11 children.
2. We have the makings of a network across Tanzania
with a focus on regional hospitals qualified to
carry out the necessary surgeries and a web of
ambassadors embedded in their local communities
providing the two-way communications needed to
make overall child surgeries successful.
3. Our CEO - Batro, and Board of Child Surgeries
Tanzania are doing a good job and I suggest their
major focus moves to meeting our goals slightly
differently from the last six years. Batro will have
4. Our three goals remain:
• More and high-quality child surgeries.
• More and better incentives for those directly involved.
• A more sustainable hospital network.
These goals now feel best able to be achieved by
a focus on training and payments on ambassadors
or community health workers and direct payments
with a bonus for quality to hospitals and doctors
who do the surgeries.
5. It was suggested in the 2015 Global Surgeries
Summit that there were 44 operations level one,
two and three hospitals should be able to
co-ordinate. Perhaps we need to cut down to a
lesser number of surgeries where we have a high
probability of known outcome, cost and time.
6. Child surgeries should have the following:
• Focus on LOCAL for find, do, review.
• Financially support only direct intervention getting to hospital, doing surgery, rehabilitation,
getting home and review.
• Add in information for villages, medicos and
hospitals about early intervention (better child
surgery outcomes), earning and investing
(staff incentives), connecting to major
donors/government (hospital sustainability).
7. Build local ambassadors network - could/should
operate like a Tupperware scheme or other
schemes like Living Goods - local, local fix, local
rehabilitation and review. Reward Surgeon Quality.
8. Ultimately, for it to grow it will need government
assistance. We need to keep one eye on the
sustainability of the hospitals, one eye on
encouraging and rewarding doctor quality and
one eye on building a network of quality
9. We need an App as in the Proof of Care concept
to co-ordinate this all and before and after
videos work well medically for internal morale and
money wise.
New Mantras for 2025
1. More surgeries and enhanced surgical capacity
that builds on existing efforts: Build local, early and
fast moving ambassadors.
2. Incentives for staff: Assist doctors, ambassadors
to make money by investing.
3. Sustainable: Focus on cost effective efficient
network with only direct payments for child
connected surgery activities and look to build
sustainability.
