Journal_1_2014_final_WEB

Organisations
UPDATE
WAWLC
World Alliance
for Wound and
Lymphoedema
Care
David Keast
President of WAWLC
www.WAWLC.org
EWMA international
Partner Organisation
The World Alliance for Wound and Lymphoedema
Care (WAWLC) continues the hard work on
advancing sustainable prevention and care of
wounds & lymphoedema in settings with limited
resources.
The annual executive board meeting of the
WAWLC took place in Geneva in November 2013.
The coordination and organisation of future initiatives
and activities of the WALWC were discussed at
the meeting.
Development of a dressing kit
Since 2012 the World Alliance for Wound and Lymphoedema
Care (WAWLC) has been in the process
of developing a dressing kit for use in limited
resource settings. This kit will be a dynamic tool
and help in providing the basic equipment for
standardised wound treatment of patients in emergency
situations.
The first step in elaborating this kit was a Delphi
like consultation launched at the end of 2012. As a
second step, the material from this consultation
was discussed by field and scientific experts during
a WAWLC Workshop at the EWMA Conference in
May 2013 in Copenhagen. Here it was discussed
what minimum material is needed to constitute a
standard wound kit.
WAWLC Workshop at EWMA-GNEAUPP 2014
During the EWMA-GNEAUPP Conference in
Madrid, the third step will be elaborated at a
WAWLC workshop where a revised standard kit will
be presented for debate and input.
This workshop will bring together experts in wound
care and actors of humanitarian contexts. Bringing
together these different experiences should help to
define the rest of the essential wound care material
that is needed to finalise the standard wound kit.
A list of the material decided on during the two first
steps will be circulated before the workshop.
The workshop will take place on
Wednesday 14 May 2014 at 16:45 -19:10.
Annual WAWLC Symposium at CAWC,
Toronto October 2014
A final consolidation of the dressing kit will be presented
at the annual WAWLC Symposium which
will take place at the Canadian Association of
Wound Care (CAWC) Conference from October 30
- November 2, 2014 in Toronto, Canada. The final
version of the dressing kit will be circulated to
wound care companies in order to have their proposal
on concrete products to be included in the kit.
Wound Course in West Africa
In 2014, a course on Chronic Wounds will be held
in Cameroon in cooperation between the Faculty of
Medicine and Biomedical Scienes at Yaoundé University,
Cameroon and the Geneva University Hospital
(HUG), Switzerland. The course includes both
theory and practice and is intended for doctors and
nurses as post-graduate training.
Since 2002, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Switzerland,
has supported the BU programme of the
district hospital, Akonolinga in Cameroon. This projects
falls within the now more than 30 years old
fruitful exchanges between Yaoundé’s University
and the HUG.
Clinic in Leogane, Haiti
On 25th of January – 1st of February 2014, Heather
Hettrick from Nova South eastern University
(NSU) in Fort Lauderdale and Robyn Bjork from the
International Lymphedema & Wound Care Training
Institute were in Leogane, Haiti, where they provided
training and logistical support for clinical staff,
under the direction of WAWLC Secretariat Dr. John
Macdonald. The treatment results were impressive.
Dr. John Macdonald has actively pursued the reopening
of the lymphedema treatment branch of
the Lymphatic Filariasis (LF) Clinic at the St. Croix
Hospital in Leogane, Haiti. This vision is one step
away from full realization. The next steps include
procuring funding for the clinic, which will serve as
an epicenter for training and treatment of
lymphedema secondary to LF.
m
INFO ON WAWLC
WAWLC started as a working group in 2007 and was
officially launched as a global partnership in 2009.
Read more about WAWLC and current projects on the website:
www.wawlc.org.
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EWMA Journal 2014 vol 14 no 1