Doctors Shelley and Nikki launched a Burn Care organisation to transform burn care treatment within Pietermaritzburg and South Africa.
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (28 May 2021) – South African children below the age of six are most likely to be burned in the home compared to any other age group. This is due to a natural curiosity that leads to accidents.
May is Burns Awareness Month, and as South Africa cools down, the chances of children accidentally burning themselves rises dramatically. According to a review by the Medical Research Council at Unisa, entitled The Epidemiology of Childhood Burn Injuries in South Africa, children aged six and younger are at particularly high risk for burns.
The review also found that children from lower-income households sustain more burns due to the fact that families heat their homes with coal or wood-burning fires and have less space in which to boil water.
Doctors Shelley and Nikki are burn surgeons working in adverse and resource-restricted conditions. They have been working on various protocols that are specific to low-middle income countries where resources would be more restricted and burn cases more frequent.
They developed an app for fellow doctors specialising in burn care. The aim is to share knowledge and experience, develop relationships and collaborative research projects for both the improvement of practitioner skills and patient outcomes.
The hope is that by collaborating with other doctors in the same situations, that patient care can be boosted despite a lack of advanced resources.
Should you be a doctor looking to collaborate on burn care treatment, you can find out more via the new app here. Registration is free.
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