Zoom Link:
Webinar ID: 818 8573 0558
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81885730558
Venue:
Online via Zoom
Title:
The role of sustainable power in the evolution of a special care baby unit in Sierra Leone
Abstract:
Bo is Sierra Leone's second city. Bo Government Hospital serves as the referral hospital for the entire district. In 2013, when Niall first arrived in-country, the children's ward was only seeing approximately 10 newborns per month, despite the hospital delivering 5,000 babies per annum and the country having one of the highest neonatal death rates in the world. Poor services meant that parents and healthcare workers thought it futile to seek care for sick babies, and they mostly died at home or in the labour ward. Over the next decade, in collaboration with colleagues from the sustainable energy sector, the special care baby unit was transformed, and now treats up to 150 babies per month. This talk will describe this evolution and the role of sustainable energy solutions in establishing a service that has earned the confidence of the community.
Bio:
Dr. Niall is a specialist public health physician in Dublin, Ireland, specialising in communicable disease outbreak control in a busy regional health protection unit. He is also Adjunct Professor of Public Health Medicine at University College Cork, Ireland. He has worked extensively in paediatric global health, with stints in Sierra Leone, Somalia, Nepal and Ukraine. Niall has been most closely associated with Sierra Leone, where he spent a long time working in at Bo Government Hospital. Firstly, in 2013 in the children's ward and secondly in 2017, when he returned to establish the region's first neonatal treatment unit. Niall is currently part of Project Bo, which is aiming to use sustainable solar power to provide 24-hour electricity to the newborn unit at Bo Government Hospital.
