In March 2024, I traveled to Singapore to attend the World Conference of Anesthesiologists. At this conference, I had the opportunity to serve as a delegate at the general assembly and present two Global Anesthesia related posters.
On March 3, I served as an ASA Delegate to the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (WFSA) General Assembly. The mission of the WFSA is to unite and empower anesthesiologists around the world to improve patient care.
During the Global Health E-Poster Presentations I presented an abstract poster titled “Establishment of the Global Academic Anesthesia Consortium (GAAC) to Assist with Improvement of Perioperative Anesthesia Training and Care in Zambia.” This poster presentation described the creation and progress to date of the Global Academic Anesthesia Consortium (GAAC), developed and initiated in 2022. The GAAC uses both live and virtual anesthesia education, research participation, and perioperative clinical training, partnering with anesthesia providers at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH)-University of Zambia in Lusaka, Zambia. Currently, there are a total of 10 US academic anesthesia departments participating in the GAAC collaborative opportunities with the goal of a sustained presence within the UTH Anesthesia Department.
I also presented the E-Poster Presentation, “Description of Work to Improve Surgery and Anesthesia Care in Sub-Saharan Africa.” The poster presentation summarized the proposal and work to date which we hope to achieve with the Baldwin Grant Award. We proposed to partner with anesthesiologists and surgeons at the University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia and Hawassa University, Hawassa, Ethiopia, to build local capacity for surgical and anesthesia QI programs.
Deborah Rusy, MD, MBA, FASA, is a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology