#safersurgeryUzbekistan

Lifebox® and ESA in Uzbekistan: safer anaesthesia training workshop

Lifebox® Foundation is proud to be working in partnership with the European Society of Anaesthesia (ESA) and the Uzbekistan Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (USAIC) to increase surgical safety for patients and anaesthesia providers in Uzbekistan.

Thanks to ESA’s generous donation, 100 pulse oximeters will be delivered on the 30 – 31 January 2015, as part of a training workshop to anaesthesia providers across the country.

Surgery in Uzbekistan is on the rise: more than 700,000 surgical treatments take place annually, with 520,000 under anaesthesia.  But with a population of nearly 29 million, Uzbekistan still suffers from a comparative lack of physicians (2.54/1000), and a maternal mortality rate more than three  times as high as in Belgium.

Lack of appropriate monitoring and training means that life-saving surgery can quickly become life-threatening.

A pulse oximeter is an essential piece of anaesthesia monitoring equipment, used to read the level of oxygen in a patient’s bloodstream. It is the only piece of equipment required to complete the World Health Organization (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist, proven to reduce surgical complications and mortality by more than 40 percent.

Lifebox is the only NGO dedicated to bringing this life-saving intervention to low-resource setting countries, where risk of mortality from surgery can be 100 to 1000 times greater than in high-resource setting countries.

Dr Jannicke Mellin-Olsen, secretary of ESA, said, “Lifebox is a reliable, well documented programme to improve access to safe anaesthesia and surgery in every corner of the world.”

View updates of this weekend’s training workshop in Uzbekistan, find out about the difference we’re making, and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter using #safersurgeryUzbekistan.