For the second year, we have been setting up and training a specialized medical team that can be deployed in any emergency, such as humanitarian crises and disasters, anywhere in the world.
Last year, we worked with experts to develop a training plan for setting up and training the team. A special pillar of our concept is, in addition to medical training, that team members also receive a certain degree of military and disaster prevention knowledge, so that they can carry out their assistance and rescue work as efficiently and as safely as possible at the affected location. The team members are recruited from the Association’s own member hospitals, but there has also been interest in the mission from outside the church health system, including university hospitals. Mostly doctors, but also nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists and operating theatre assistants have joined the initiative. The team and missionary activities are led by specialists in disaster relief, doctors who have travelled around the world and infectologists with experience in tropical diseases.
- Hungary Helps Porgramme in Chad
Health volunteers coordinated by the St Francis Hospital in Budapest have spent several months in Chad, treating refugees, carrying out hospital work and running educational programmes. The activities were carried out in cooperation with the Chadian Ministry of Health, focusing on critical and rapid intervention areas. The programmes were supported by the Hungary Helps Programme in Chad.
Aid is essential to improve life expectancy, which is one of the lowest in the world, and to reduce the leading causes of child mortality, such as communicable diseases.
Alongside Hungarian doctors and health workers, local healers and the health government are committed to working towards these goals. Our common goal is to build partnerships that will contribute to the long-term growth of knowledge and care for the people of sub-Saharan Africa.
We are grateful to everyone who supported the work of the Rapid Response Medical Team and the success of the mission. - Pacemaker implantation in Chad
The first pacemaker implantation was carried out in the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, during a health mission coordinated by the St. Francis Hospital in Budapest. The first operations were carried out by Prof. Dr. István Hartyánszky, Head of Cardiac Surgery at Semmelweis University, and Dr. Emil Toldy-Schedel, Electrophysiologist at the Buda Irgalmasrendi Hospital and Director General of the St. Francis Hospital of Budapest, in collaboration with local doctors. The equipment for the procedures was provided by Biotronic Hungária Kft. The team also followed up patients with a previous pacemaker in another hospital , and carried out cardiological examinations of a number of hospitalised patients and outpatients, including pregnant women who had fled the country.
The aim of the Chadian Ministry of Health is to make pacemaker implantation available locally, without the need to send patients abroad (to Morocco, Turkey or South Africa). The long-term aim of the programme is to equip local doctors with the professional skills of pacemaker implantation and programming, so that they can provide pacemaker treatment locally in the future. To this end, a number of local cardiologists have received training in ECG and pacemaker programming.
The programme was supported by the Hungary Helps Programme.
