IAC report on PAPSA Meeting 2016, Lagos, Nigeria

PAPSA 2016 was well attended by BAPS members. There were 10 participants of which 6 were faculty, 3 trainees and one retiree. BAPS provided 2 courses the Hugh Greenwood minimally invasive course (MIS) and the Hugh Greenwood neonatal skills course. The trainees were active with their presentations and we would encourage more trainees to participate. We thank Mr Ade-Ajayi who was most helpful in looking after the Hugh Greenwood course teams in his birth country of Nigeria.

HUGH GREENWOOD MIS COURSE (Director Naved Alizai and Niyi Ade-Ajayi)

There were 16 participants and the course was divided into live operating, lectures, dry lab and wet lab. We had a mixture of BAPS faculty (Richard Stewart, Ashish Minocha & Kokila Lakhoo) and local faculty. Local faculty was directed by Mr Lukman from Nigeria. The skills lab facilities were very satisfactory and the course was well structured. We had 75% feedback return and 90% course satisfaction with room for improvement in instruments and more time with wet lab.

For the future thus we have encouraged pre-recording the operation and discussion with the surgical team after the surgery in the lecture theatre. PAPSA has agreed to this for future meetings. The aim of the course was for the course now to be adopted by the Nigeria team in Lagos under the directorship of Mr. Lukeman to then run the course independently in the West Africa region. Support from BAPS will only be for refreshing the trainers with refresher courses. This is most encouraging as the IAC is reaching its goal in making PAPSA independent of High Income Countries (HIC) support.

HUGH GREENWOOD NEONATAL SKILLS COURSE (director Tony Lander).

There were 38 participants from 15 countries. The overseas faculty included Kokila Lakhoo, Ashish Minocha, Richard Stewart, Niyi Ade-Ajayi and the local faculty was made up of further 5 facilitators. The course was structured into lectures and animal tissue models for neonatal skills and suturing procedures. The one day course encouraged participants of all levels which included, interns, surgical trainees, paediatric surgical trainees and consultants. We had 98% feedback of which 96% were very satisfied and 4% were satisfied. The satisfied group would like more skills stations and better instruments. We are very reliant on the local organising committee for instruments. However at a different meeting I retrieved disposable neonatal long line instruments which worked well for these courses. IAC members are encouraged to do so from their centres for the overseas courses. Again the local team would like to adopt this course for the region under the directorship of Dr. Soji and we have encouraged this.

PAPSA 2018 ETHIOPIA

PAPSA executive has agreed to the badging of the neonatal section with BAPS at the 2018 meeting in Ethiopia and the IAC is hoping to encourage BAPS members and trainees to attend and submit papers. The PAPSA meeting standards are improving year by year and this year it was close to meetings in HIC with emphasis on clinical research. BAPS members had a total of 8 presentations which included a talk by David Lloyd as the Heinz Rode Lecture.