Freedom From Fistula (FFF) strives to provide the highest standard of care possible within an African setting. Capacity building of national staff and quality improvements are an important part of all the FFF projects.
Our national staff in Africa are a mix of Ministry of Health staff posted to our projects, employed and on-call staff. Clinical and non-clinical support staff. We aim to help all of them develop their skills and competencies in their chosen areas.
Our surgical, anaesthetic, nurse and midwife training programs focus on quality of care, quality improvement and respect for patients.
Equally, all non-clinical staff have to learn respect for patients and support the ethos of FFF to provide compassionate care for patients.
We train 100+ individuals per year to help capacity building, provide medical staff training, community education and compassionate care.
In 2022 our team at the Aberdeen Women's Centre in Sierra Leone trained 5 medical officers, 1 STP, 4 STP students, 15 nurses, 8 midwives, 8 midwife students and 5 teenagers for internship.
Thanks to funding from UNFPA through the Spotlight Initiative, The KOICA project, and the Iceland government, our fistula care centre in Malawi provided comprehensive two-week training in fistula care and management and a one-month training in fistula repairs of minor surgeries. This training equipped 4 ward nurses and 4 theatre nurses with the necessary skills to provide quality fistula care to their patients.
Dr Michael Breen, at our Fistula Care Centre in Madagascar, led the short-term training in fistula of 6 local surgeons from Pavilion Sainte Fleur, SALFA and the local hospital. In addition we trained 2 volunteer nurses.
