January Grand Rounds: 'Delivering Aid in the Hungriest Place on Earth: The Case of Akobo County, South Sudan'

Dr. Satchit Balsari, the Director of the Global Emergency Medicine Program at WCMC, and Dr. Michael Vortmann, an Assistant Attending Physician in Emergency Medicine at NYP, delivered January's Global Health Grand Rounds lecture entitled "Delivering Aid in the Hungriest Place on Earth: The Case of Akobo County, South Sudan". The two emergency medicine physicians shared their experiences volunteering in South Sudan with the International Medical Corps in 2012. Dr. Balsari explained that the low level of education and health infrastructure in South Sudan is due to the 48 year-long Sudanese civil war that concluded in 2005.  Despite the grim circumstances, both doctors witnessed areas for hope. Dr. Vortmann spent much of his time providing clinical care and creating a table of quinine dosages for malaria patients, helping to reduce dosage calculation difficulty and medical error. Dr. Balsari focused primarily on leading mass casualty response training programs in several villages. He described the process of overcoming language and education barriers to teach concrete skills and help more patients survive gunshot wounds during periods of conflict. Both doctors enumerated the many challenges to healthcare in Akobo County, from physical and geographic constraints to misguided NGO projects. In conclusion, Dr. Vortmann noted that although there is a tendency to be cynical in thinking that one person cannot have an impact in areas like South Sudan, there are concrete ways to make one person’s life, one hospital, or one village just a little bit healthier and secure.