Thank you for 2024! Bring on 2025!
| Welcome to TPA’s (belated) final quarterly newsletter for 2024. Firstly, thank you so much to each and every one of you for working with TPA last year. Thank you for your time, expertise, patience with technology and passion for improving the health and well-being of children and young people. Secondly, a big welcome to all new volunteers! Whether you are lending your expertise in healthcare or in non-clinical areas, your support is deeply appreciated. Finally of course, welcome back to our existing community! Hoping everybody had a safe holiday season and here’s to a productive and powerful 2025. |
Towards the end of last year, Prof Karen Zwi and Dr Dimitri Tzioumi travelled to Cambodia (along with TPA’s fearless leader Dr Kathryn) to share their expertise in child protection.
Child protection is a vital, challenging area of our work which can be daunting and confronting for all of us everywhere. It was a privilege for TPA to work together with valued colleagues in Cambodia, up-skilling each other and building confidence in identifying and managing child protection issues. A strong and effective child protection system involves not just the healthcare sector but many other sectors of society as well. No country has a perfect child protection system. The trip was an excellent example of how TPA aims to play its specific, crucial role in combatting large scale challenges.
Thank you so much to Prof Zwi and Dr Tzioumi for your generosity and to our Cambodian colleagues and friends for your hospitality and engagement. Pictured above are Prof Karen Zwi, Dr Dimitri Tzioumi and Dr Kathryn Currow
with the Khmer Kid Paediatric Clinic, and below with the Senior Executive team of the National Paediatric Hospital.
The last quarter of 2024 also saw TPA have the honour of visiting our Vietnamese colleagues. This was a very productive time where many areas of potential future collaboration and discussion were identified. One of these areas, another complicated challenge for all of us, is caring for our patients who are above a healthy weight, and specifically managing nutrition for patients who may be living with a disability.
Did you know that according to the 2018 Global Nutrition Report, 88% of countries now face the overlapping burdens of children facing stunting, anaemia and being above a healthy weight? We look forward to deepening our knowledge in this area together.
Picture below: Dr Kathryn with the Board of Directors of National Children’s Hospital.
Below: the dynamic and hard-working nutrition team at Vietnam National Children’s Hospital lead by Dr Luu Thi My
Thuc and Dr Ngoc Anh Doan.
Below: after another year of fruitful collaboration it was delightful to catch up with the respiratory team of the
Vietnam National Children’s Hospital (pictured in the two photos below)
Final picture: Prof Vu Chi Dung, Head of Department of Medical Genetics, Metabolism and Endocrinology and
Director of Center for Rare Disease and Newborn Screening, Vietnam National Children’s Hospital, Dr
Kathryn and Dr Hong Van from the International Department.
2025 is already off to a flying start with excellent sessions underway. In the South Pacific we have discussed updates
in rheumatic heart disease and revisited the importance of echocardiogram in identifying subclinical carditis,
pharmacokinetics in children, clinical genetics as well as follow up on existing cases. If there are any more topics for
discussion, please reach out at any time.
Australian volunteers continue to benefit from exposure to pathology rarely seen in Australia and to the challenges of problem-solving and adapting their clinical reasoning to resource limited settings. Do you know a subspecialist who would like to join our community?
Thank you to Dr Elodie Moreau for another cracking year of the South Pacific Journal Club.
South Pacific journal club. Thank
you so much for another year of
enthusiasm for the TPA South Pacific
Paediatric Journal Club. In November,
Dr Deborah Airau did an excellent
summary of a systematic review of
post discharge interventions for
children treated for malnutrition
which demonstrated how much more
research is needed in this important
area of paediatric medicine. It was
also a great opportunity to discuss
the merits and challenges of narrative
systematic reviews.
Thank you to Prof Mellis for
facilitating and sharing his pearls of
wisdom including the difference
between a typical systematic review
and meta-analysis vs a narrative
systematic review, which is not to be
confused with a narrative review.
Thank you also to Dr Agrawal who
also joined us today to share his
thoughts and experience. Both of our
wonderful facilitators have now been
teaching us for 3 years and we feel
very fortunate to benefit from all their
wisdom.
Please note all photographs are generated by artificial intelligence software (except those used of staff and colleagues with consent!)
