Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world. The country's lack of economic power is particularly detrimental to school education and the subsequent training of skilled workers. However, this is absolutely necessary to ensure sufficient medical education and the training of medical personnel. In addition to the lack of medical knowledge, affected patients have to finance their treatments themselves, which hardly any citizen there can afford. For this reason, diseases are not treated or are treated only with considerable delay. This situation is further aggravated by the state clinics, which are inadequately equipped in terms of personnel, technology and logistics.
These general conditions are also reflected in the field of paediatric surgery. In Burkina Faso, 46 % of the population are children (approx. 7.2 million). In the whole country, however, there are only six paediatric surgeons who look after the children. This leads to considerable waiting lists - even for urgent operations. For example, emergency artificial bowel exits (e.g. after typhoid perforations) in children cannot be repositioned in time with a simple operation. The affected children must therefore live with a loss of electrolytes and fluids that is vital under the given climatic conditions for years.
The association "Operieren in Afrika e.V." works together with locals to improve health care in Burkina Faso and give more people access to urgently needed treatments and medicines. In just under 18 years of existence, the association has built a surgical and an obstetrics clinic and trained the necessary clinical staff on site. So far, more than 11,000 patients have been treated and almost 2,000 operations were performed. The association is financed purely by donations and is therefore grateful for any support.
