About Us
GECS is an Irish voluntary, non-profit organisation with a core objective of providing emergency care training to doctors and nurses in countries with developing healthcare systems, thus reducing morbidity and mortality.
What does GECS do?
Global Emergency Care Skills (GECS) is a non-profit voluntary organisation founded in 2008 with a core objective of providing high-quality emergency medicine training to healthcare professionals in countries where emergency medicine is a developing speciality.
Sepsis and trauma are two of the fastest-growing causes of morbidity and mortality in populations with developing healthcare systems. Recognising the deficit in Emergency Care training in Africa, Dr Jean O’Sullivan, Consultant in Emergency Medicine established the Global Emergency Care Skills charity.
The training is undertaken through the provision of a skills and simulation-based course in trauma care, resuscitation skills and major incident management. The teaching faculty is composed of emergency medicine physicians from Ireland.
The first Global Emergency Care Skills course was held in Nairobi, Kenya in March 2009. 45 participants from nine different hospitals in Kenya attended the course. The feedback from participants was so positive that the organisation ran a second course in Kenya in August 2009.
To date GECS has run 11 courses, teaching over 500 doctors, nurses and clinical officers in Africa. The first two courses were held in Nairobi at the Mater Hospital in 2009. In 2010 GECS partnered with the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and the College of Surgeons of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (COECSA) to deliver training to doctors at the Lusaka University Teaching Hospital in Zambia and the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. In September 2011, GECS faculty travelled to Muhimbili University Hospital in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana in 2012. since 2013, GECS has returned several times to Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia to run further courses.
Objective
GECS objective of reducing morbidity and mortality is undertaken through the provision of a skills-based course in trauma care, resuscitation skills and major incident management every year in a different region.
The curriculum has been developed by an expert body of Irish Emergency Medicine doctors and is based on best international evidence. It is tailored to local epidemiological patterns of injury and illness and to available local healthcare resources. The course covers the emergency care of both adult and paediatric patients.
The teaching equipment used in each course is donated locally and the final day of the course is dedicated to training the participants to teach these skills to colleagues in their local healthcare setting.
Make a Donation
All work including administration, website management, teaching, curriculum development and fundraising is done on an entirely voluntary basis with neither salary nor expense allowance given to any board member. If you would like to support GECS work please donate below.