Our Asia Pacific Paediatric Community Strengthens
Welcome to our second quarterly newsletter! Better outcomes for babies and children have been at the heart of well over a hundred meetings so far this year. It is the continued honour and vitalising challenge of our Australian doctors, nurses and allied health experts to provide specialist advice and learn in turn from our overseas colleagues. Specifically, we would like to highlight the wisdom and resilience witnessed of Tongan health professionals dealing with very challenging circumstances at the interface of traditional medicine and conventional “Western medicine”. Overall April to June 2024 has seen the management of conditions rare, complex and important; congenital syphilis, severe and devastating burns, gestational alloimmune liver disease, ambiguous genitalia and its psychosocial aspects. Thank you for your support and involvement as with mutual respect and gratitude the TPA community navigates situations that are often medically, logistically, ethically and emotionally complex. |
TPA is so grateful to these dedicated nurses, all studying child health at the Solomon Island National University, for their participation in our nurse-led Sessions! We wish you all the best with your study.
TPA runs the City 2 Surf!
Taking Paediatrics Abroad (TPA) is conducting a project led by Dr Shubha Srinivasan to start newborn screening for congenital hypothyroidism in Honiara. Screening and treating early can prevent severe permanent disability and stunted growth. Treatment is cheap and readily available, but we need to detect babies at birth with a simple test – something we have done in Australia and many countries around the world for 50 years. For under $2/baby ($10,000 per year) TPA will set up and support newborn screening in Honiara over the next 3 years and build capacity for local testing long term.
The City 2 Surf is Australia’s most iconic running event that takes participants 14km from Sydney’s Hyde Park to Bondi Beach. On August 13th, TPA volunteers and their loved ones will be running to fundraise for our program. Donate to encourage our team to run faster!
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?
South Pacific journal club. Thank youto Dr Mele Pomale from Tonga for her presentation on whooping cough immunity in pregnancy and Dr Martin Keni from the Solomon Islands who covered causes of diarrhoeal deaths in children under five.
TPA currently covers sixteen different specialties including emergency medicine, intensive care, cardiology, neurology, NICU, haematology, respiratory, gastroenterology, endocrinology, developmental paediatrics, infectious diseases, immunology, renal, rheumatology, genetics and child protection. Not to mention dentistry, physiotherapy, and nursing sessions covering anything from stoma care to inotropes to leadership.
Please note all photographs are generated by artificial intelligence software (except those used of staff and colleagues with consent!)