“The Goal is Primary Trauma Care certified medical professionals in every Provincial and District Hospital in the Lao PDR.”
Trauma continues to be among the top ten causes of deaths in the Lao PDR (per WHO, 2019 data). To reduce the mortality and disability for trauma patients, it is important that frontline health care workers are trained to respond to trauma in the first few hours of a traumatic incident to save lives. It is essential for the Ministry of Health to periodically retrain providers at all levels of frontline health care in to keep their skills up-to-date and retrain others who have become new health care workers in provinces and district health centers.
Health Leadership International (HLI) received grant funding from the U. S. Department of State, Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement to collaborate with the Lao PDR Ministry of Health and the University of Health Sciences Emergency Medicine Department to provide the comprehensive country-wide roll-out in the seventeen provinces of PTC training. In February 2018 in Vientiane emergency medicine residents were trained as PTC trainers with HLI medical staff providing the expert training. The Primary Trauma Care (PTC) Foundation is a UK-based foundation. Their mission is to save lives and prevent disabilities in low and middle-income countries among trauma patients. The PTC course manual became a WHO publication in 2003 and has been conducted in over 80 countries. The PTC course has been translated into 14 languages and in 2017 Health Leadership International, a US non-profit working with the Ministry of Health, translated the PTC manual into Laotian.
Over the next two years these trainers provided PTC training and certification to district healthcare providers in all seventeen provinces using the Laotian translated curriculum. Over 252 frontline healthcare professionals from Provincial and District Hospitals in each Province were trained. The outcome for this emergency medical training was a unified and improved medical response to trauma at both the provincial and district hospitals and rural clinics in Lao PDR.
HLI’s received DOS grant funding and collaborated with the MoH to accomplish the following:
- Translation of all PTC course books
- Central level – University of Health Sciences; Emergency Medicine Residents 2-1-2 training
- Provincial Hospital level 2-1-2 training in 2018 and 2019
Eight Northern provinces (37 Provincial hospital physicians trained)
Eight Southern provinces (32 Provincial hospital physicians trained) - District Hospital level training:
Northern district hospitals (113 trained)
Southern district hospitals (133 trained)
Since the end of DOS grant, HLI has been supporting the Ministry of Health’s annual 2-1-2 training for their first year Emergency Medicine residents and personnel from the central hospitals in the Vientiane Capitol (in 2022, 2023, and 2024). (See Lao PTC Reports from 2018-2024 on Primary Trauma Care Foundation website.)