About Seed Global Health
Seed Global Health (Seed) is a non-governmental organisation founded in 2012 with a strong reputation in forging meaningful and trusted partnerships, and demonstrated significant impact in strengthening health systems through building human resource for health capacity. With a unique focus on educating and training skilled health professionals in Africa. Seed is currently operational in 4 countries including Uganda, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Zambia. Seed started work in Uganda in 2013 with Main focus areas being in Emergency Care and Maternal, New-born, and Child Health Seed helped mobilize 191 Health professionals from over 20 medical and nursing specialties to serve as educators at 27 training institutions across these countries.
These educators, helped train over 16,000 health professionals, and taught over 850 courses and new skills in close partnership with local counterparts and colleagues.300 courses with a total of 6,150 health professionals were trained in Uganda alone. However despite this progress number of health workers in Uganda is still far below optimum and this is further threatened by emerging threats like COVID-19 and Ebola Hemorhagic Fever epidemics that limit physical interactions between content experts and other heath workers.
In 2019, Seed launched its 5 year strategy focusing on emergency care and maternal and neonatal child health. Partnering with training institutions, ministry of health and ministry of education to train health professionals in these two specialties. With three years we have trained 5000 health workers in these specialties, produced 12 emergency physicians and supported the development of two curricula Master of Midwifery and Master of Nursing
About the Emergency Department at Ministry of Health
The emergency medical services department was formed in July of 2017 as a reorganization of the National Ambulance Services Department which was established in 2016. This came as a result of the increasing national need for better emergency care. The department is charged with developing emergency care services within the national health system in Uganda. The department recently launched its national strategic plan and policy, among the policy objectives is; To develop dedicated human resources for emergency care through training, capacity building and review of the HRH structure at Health Facilities. The department has therefore proposed the ECHO Model as one of the means that this objective will be achieved.
About ECHO
Established in 2003 in New Mexico, Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is an innovative telemonitoring program designed to create virtual communities of learners. ECHO programs bring together healthcare providers and subject matter experts using videoconference technology, brief lecture presentations, and case-based learning, fostering an “all learn, all teach” approach. During an ECHO session, participants present real (anonymized) cases to the specialists—and each other—for discussion and recommendations. Participants are engaged in the bi-directional virtual knowledge network by sharing clinical challenges and learning from experts and peers. The Project ECHO model has been recognized globally as a successful tool to improve patient care outcomes.
Teams will be supported with IT equipment, emergency kits and hands-on training facilities to aid their work
About ReACT
Through the ECHO Model, the EMS department and Seed Global Health aim to establich multicadre in-hospital teams at all high volume facilities that will be skilled in the management of all kinds of emergencies in the emergency department as well as inpatient wards. The teams are currently formed at National and Regional referral hospitals. In support of the teams, onsite regional mentors have been selected to guide the skilling of these teams. The undertaking is aimed at improving the team approach to managing patients with life threatening conditions, similar to pitstops in formula one racing, and building a body of critical knowledge and skill, hence improving patient outcome.