Educational Seminars (Goma, DRC and Saragur, India)

IPOP's first projects in Africa and India were educational seminars on pediatric topics such as neonatal and pediatric life support training for our colleagues at partner organizations. Today, we continue that tradition by sending teams of physicians and other health professionals to the sites to teach weeklong, expanded educational seminars. The themes for these typically annual seminars are chosen by our partners; IPOP then recruits professionals from the USA with expertise in those areas. Seminars are usually a combination of large-format lectures with small group sessions that target subsets of the audience in hands-on workshops. 

Our target audience is not limited to doctors, but includes all allied health professionals that care for the children in these communities. We learned early on that with fewer doctors in our partner communities, any educational effort must include those who actually work at the bedside of sick or disabled children. To this end, our teams of educators always include nurses as well as physicians. As a testament to our success in both Africa and India, our educational programs have expanded to include faculty and students from local university medical schools (University of Goma, Mysore Medical College).

IPOP strives to offer this program on an annual basis. We have been able to make this commitment to our partners thanks directly to the continued support of the Marmor Foundation.

Past themes include:

• Neonatal Resuscitation: India (2004) and annually in Goma where we have developed materials in French.
• Congenital Cardiac Disease and Pediatric Resuscitation (India, 2008)
• Evaluation and management of sexual and physical abuse in Children (Goma, 2007)
• Pediatric trauma and topics in physical rehabilitation (Goma, 2009)