Nyaya Health is pleased to enter into a formal collaboration with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Surgery and Public Health (CSPH). The Center’s director, Dr Selwyn Rogers, and program administrator Tess P. Panizales, will be working with Nyaya as we renovate and open the once-abandoned Bayalpata Hospital.
Surgery is not a luxury item, but a fundamental component of basic public health and comprehensive primary care services, particularly in a region where road traffic accidents, farming disasters, and dangerous hilly terrain cause a number of injuries. Furthermore, the need for emergency obstetrical procedures such as C-sections is vital in an area where 1 in 100 pregnant women die due to complications of childbirth.
Nyaya Health seeks to redefine primary care in terms of community needs, rather than assumptions about the limits of care achievable in resource-denied settings. We’ve found that true “sustainability” and “cost-effectiveness” come from training local health providers in comprehensive care that can address changing community conditions, and building a health system that equips the community with enough resources to sustain a healthy living and working community. The wealthiest countries are not “sustainable” without the resources extracted from poor countries every day, and the most “cost-effective” care over the long-term is often the preventive and curative treatments that prevent whole communities from collapsing from epidemic disease or dangerous living conditions. The community and local government work with Nyaya to repair the local health system ravaged by war, and under the new democratic government, we are contributing to building the general public-sector health system by developing health centers like Bayalpata.
Bayalpata Hospital was built decades ago, but was never opened, as government officials moved its equipment to a more powerful constituency. Locals surrounded the facility in protest, and many were shot and killed. Now, after the democratic revolution, the local community and new government have asked that Nyaya renovate the site and help them provide a community hospital.
CSPH will provide vital technical expertise as we engage in the process of building operating rooms, developing and implementing surgical protocols, and improving quality control to deliver the highest standards of care to our catchment population of over 250,000 people. Our initial work with the CSPH will include a needs-assessment and pre-operative data collection program including the completion of a WHO Needs Assessment and Evaluation for Resource Limited Health Care Facilities, a Modified WHO Tool for Situational Analysis to Assess Emergency and Essential Surgical Care, and a Clinical Staff Skills Assessment.
Once Bayalpata Hospital opens, we will use a local database system to transmit the following data over secure Internet to the Brigham team: (1) Mortality and morbidity monthly data; (2) Intraoperative events; (3) Postoperative events within 30 days; (4) Cases returned to OR within 24 hours; (5) Cases referred to another hospital for operation; (6) Cases referred to another hospital after surgical procedure; (7) Cases served. This will provide the basis for continued analysis and improvement of our training and delivery programs.