Our Work in Laos
Laos is a poor, communist country in South East Asia, bounded by Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Burma. It is a mainly subsistence farming country, and has very little infrastructure or medical support. Therefore any disability that prevents a person from working affects both that person and their community.
As in Malawi, there are very few orthopaedic surgeons, and of those very few have any specialist training. The main hospital is in the capital Vientiane, and there are 5 other regional centres throughout the country.
We first visited Laos in February 2006, when we ran a four day training course in the management of club foot in the National Rehabilitation Centre in the capital, Vientiane. This centre is well supported by COPE, a NGO that has been involved in South East Asia for a number of years. They have a specialised orthotics and prosthetics department, and provide a very good service for diseases such as polio and leprosy.
The course was very well received, and plans were set in motion to set up a national committee for the recognition and management of club foot. We then returned in February 2007 for a follow-up visit. We operated on some neglected cases – providing hands-on teaching for the surgeons – and visited the regional centres to find out how they were implementing our previous teaching.
In conjunction with COPE, we are planning to return to provide some surgical training in basic orthopaedic skills.