African Conference on Emergency Medicine: Building Paediatric Emergency Medicine Research Capacity in Africa
Workshop presentation – 5 November 2024
Participants from eight countries attended this workshop attached to the African Conference on Emergency Medicine in Gabarone, Botswana.
Faculty in this workshop from PREDICT included Franz Babl and Sandy Hopper, from REPEM in Europe Kristina Keitel, and from the PEM CRC network in the US Kemi Badaki-Makun. It followed the model of similar workshops in India led by PREDICT.
Following several didactic sessions about the purpose and mechanics of establishing a paediatric emergency research network and examples of existing networks we conducted a prioritisation exercise where participants were asked to nominate research priorities which were refined in subsequent discussions. It included topics around sepsis, implementation of existing international guidelines, several topics around critical illness (e.g. malaria, respiratory infections, POCUS) and prehospital care. There was a lively discussion about next steps, the challenges of countries/health systems and emergency medicine at different stages of development, the delineation vs other specialties and whether to aim for a pan-African network or more regional networks.
