Foreword

Mortality remains high in critically ill Nigerian children under the age of 5 despite the much vaunted WHO millennium development goals to reduce mortality in this age bracket by 2015. Nigeria and many other African countries have not met this target because of poor health infrastructure, perpetual political conflicts, and high disease burden compounded by lack of expertise in pediatric critical care medicine.

This initiative is part of a necessary first step in bringing about needed change through education and curriculum development in Nigerian medical schools, with the ultimate goal of developing critical care services in our major teaching hospitals. This is not an attempt to replicate critical care services as it is practiced in affluent Western societies but the effort is to start by teaching a standard curriculum to providers and also by skillfully adapting application of basic concepts in pediatric critical care medicine to the unique patient population in Nigeria with the understanding that the clinician has to adapt to the limitations imposed by dearth of needed critical care infrastructure. I’m of the opinion that once the clinician overcomes the limitations imposed by a knowledge gap (most crippling of all limiting factors) it is relatively easy to overcome that imposed by absence of needed supplies. The human capacity development in pediatric critical care is crucial for pediatric healthcare delivery in Nigeria; that is the main focus of this initiative

The course consists of didactics based on core topics of a standard critical care curriculum comparable to any similar course taught in major medical institutions in the world. These core lectures are supplemented with simulated case scenarios using a portable high fidelity simulator (ISimulate-ALsi©). The course is available annually at the University College Hospital Ibadan, Nigeria. In future, the program will be expanded to major cities and teaching hospitals in Nigeria. We welcome suggestions about how to move this initiative forward with a view to improving needed critical care support for Nigerian children.