Children Calling

This week the International Society of Paediatric Neurosurgeons met in Vina Del Mar, Chile for 4 days. 400 surgeons from 60 countries descended upon a beautiful beach hotel. They came from all kinds of places, but mostly from the rich hemisphere of the world.

SubSaharan Africa has 500 neurosurgeons, less than 2% of the world’s number. Our representation at this conference was minuscule.

Neurosurgery has grown. The complexity of surgery has advanced in ways that are incredible to fathom, and the ones who have driven the technology forward are not slowing down. There were surgeons taking tumours out, repairing defects, restoring strength. Children all over the church world are being diagnosed and healed in ways that were impossible just a few decades ago. It is glaring that all the continents, North and South of the equator are pushing forward with health care, except one. Somehow we may have missed the memo about what science of the body and human welfare is.

I am sure that there is something about setting the targets of healthcare delivery off the bounds of the continent that detracts from optimising efforts to impact the people who live on it. I can’t find any other explanation for this phenomenon. Everywhere outside this continent, medical capacity that enables children to live better lives has improved. From the outskirts of South America to the artic slopes of North Europe, people are living better lives. I just can’t get over the fact that it seems to be, that the arch of health innovation bends sharply over Africa, touching some of its nether and upper regions,? leaving large areas of SubSaharan Africa in medical prehistory.

And the consequences of being left behind are dire. The diseases that kill today are not those of yesteryear. It is no longer enough for medical strategizing? to be done remotely and implementation carried out by long distance control. The medical challenges that kill young people on the youngest continent, cannot be solved in the conference rooms of the G8 and World Health Assembly. The infectious diseases that were usually sorted out by sending shiploads of antibacterial medications and vaccines, have been overtaken by traumatic? brain injury and hemorrhagic stroke. Even preventable? congenital anomalies like spina bifida will not be touched by remote initiatives. The political will needed to do the folate fortification that is the only way of reducing the scourge that takes creates life long social burdens on a struggling health economy, must be pushed by local advocacy from medical staff who are ready to engage the community at all levels from government to truck-pusher.

In 50 years the employable? human resource of the world will be African. If we do not strategise a path that educates this resource and optimisés cognitive capacity, African young men and women will not be able to do in the 2090s what China and India have been able to do in the 2000s. At a time that the US and Europe hit their plateaus of productive capacity China and India have been able to step in and be the key production centres of the world. They have succeeded with significant financial returns, and it is no surprise that in the same decade they have both gone to the moon and back.

Here we have left the specialist training of young people to be their prerogative, completely determined by the unmentored ou drive and motivation of young medical professionals. Our whole future as a nation as far as medical care is concerned, is not based on cold analysis of our needs and strategy that changes need into opportunity for innovation, but the decisions of young people and their academic inclination. And we have no plans to accommodate them if they succeed and want to stay. We have made it much more reasonable for medical professionals to leave our shores and thrive, than stay and dissipate.

And time is flying.