Without Borders

Editor's Blog

  • Global Stuff You Should Know

    Bringing Neuroscience to Cambodia 
     
    Soma Sahai-Srivastava, MD, FANA, FAHS, Clinical Prof. of Neurology, Dir., Neurology clinics Program Director, Headache Dept. of Neurology Keck Medical Center of USC, Los Angeles, CA
     
    Cambodia is a Southeast Asian country, of 15 million, with a per capita annual income $1,080. For 100 years until 1953, it was a French colony, followed by the formation of a kingdom. In 1970, civil war led to rise of the Khmer rouge and Pol Pot who had a communist agenda “a classless society with no economy”. During this time, 2-3 million Cambodians were executed and the educated class was targeted. Only a handful of doctors remained (many died or left the country). In my many trips to Cambodia in the last decade, volunteering solo, I realized that there are no short term volunteering opportunities for neurology clinical care, unlike other specialties like Emergency Medicine, Pediatrics, Surgery etc. No neurology outpatient clinics or inpatient specialized programs existed until recently. There were only 3 neurologists in the country in 2012 (Loo, 2012). The first Internal Medicine residency program launched in 2011 and there are still no adult or pediatric neurology residency programs. There is one pediatric neurosurgeon and no pediatric neurologists in the entire country. There is a lack of commonly prescribed neurological medications, (e.g. phenytoin and phenobarbital are the only antiepileptics available at the public hospitals). Under these circumstances, I realized that rather than volunteering in clinics treating individual patients, the first priority was neuroscience education and curriculum development at all levels —undergraduate, medical school and postgraduate.
     
     
    Without Borders Blog: The Changing Landscape of Pediatric Neuro-HIV
     
    David Bearden, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics, Rochester, NY -- USA
     
    I started working with patients with HIV in 1990’s as a research assistant on HIV adherence studies. Things weren’t as bad as they had been during the eighties, but we still lost a lot of patients to central nervous system infections. At that time, the HIV epidemic in the United States was in the process of transitioning from a nearly universally fatal disease to a chronic, somewhat manageable illness. Over the course of the next ten years, this transition occurred at different speeds and with different success rates in different populations, but by the time I started pediatric neurology residency in 2006, many of the pediatricians I worked with had never taken care of a sick child with HIV, and neurologic complications of HIV in children had become quite uncommon. When I talked about my interest in neurologic complications of HIV in residency interviews, one of the most common responses was “I didn’t know HIV caused any neurologic problems.”
     

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  • On The Road

    Congress Report: The 23rd World Congress of Neurology, September 16 - 21, 2017, Kyoto, Japan

    Steven L. Lewis, MD, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA and Wolfgang Grisold, MD, KFJ hospital, Vienna, Austria

    We are pleased to report on the XXIII Congress of the World Federation of Neurology, which took place from September 16 - 21, 2017 in Kyoto, Japan. This report is based in large part on our report on the World Congress that we recently published in World Neurology (1), the WFN’s official newsletter. Interested readers are also encouraged also to sign up for a free subscription to World Neurology.

    The World Congress of Neurology is the premiere international conference of the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) and occurs every two years, rotating among each of six major regions of the world, and hosted by a national neurological society (2). This rotation among many regions of the world, to quote WFN president Raad Shakir, “ensures its diversity and uniqueness.” (3). The location of each world congress is decided four years in advance by the WFN’s Council of Delegates (who represent the national member neurological societies from around the world [4]), who vote on nominations from the upcoming region. The previous World Congress of Neurology was held in Santiago, Chile in 2015.

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  • Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

    The World Federation of Neurology (WFN) and the Austrian Neurological Society (OEGN)  - They are pleased to announce the renewal of their partnership to invite four African colleagues to visit the Neurology Departments of the Medical University of Vienna, University of Graz, Innsbruck Medical University and University Hospital Salzburg, Austria. Find more information here.

    ANA’s International Outreach Scholarship - June 30th is the deadline to apply. The purpose of the International Outreach Scholarship is to allow young neurologists the opportunity to pursue their global interests in neurology. Find more information here.

    Zambia seeks Neuro-educators for its new post graduate program in Neurology - Would you be interested in a short-term global health experience teaching neurology in Zambia? Currently, there are no Zambian adult or pediatric neurologists, but that will soon be changing. Dr. Deanna Saylor, MD, MHS, recently relocated full-time to the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia to launch two-year fellowship programs in both adult and pediatric neurology. These programs will begin in October 2018 through the University of Zambia School of Medicine and will train the first cohort of Zambian neurologists. She is coordinating these programs and is currently looking for volunteers to come to Zambia for one month periods to attend on the neurology services and teach our neurology trainees. The univeristy is looking for adult and pediatric neurologists in all areas of neurology to come anytime in the 2019 calendar year. (While its preferred you make a commitment in one-month blocks, the university would also entertain two week periods.) If you are interested or would like to hear more details, please reach out to Dr. Saylor at deanna@jhmi.edu. Zambia is beautiful, the trainees are excited to learn, and the neurology is both abundant and incredibly interesting there!

    Resident and Fellow Section: International Issues A Guide to U.S. Academic Global Health Programs in Neurology U.S. trainees interested in undertaking a global health elective should check out this month’s Resident’s and Fellow’s Section. In International Issues: A Guide to U.S. Academic Global Health Programs in Neurology, Samudralwar and colleagues provide pragmatic, insightful advice about how to go about doing this along with a helpful listing of existing opportunities. If you are a health professional in neurology or allied fields working outside of the US who accepts US trainees, please also check out this paper and consider adding your opportunity for neurology trainees to the online directory. 

    Practice Current Newest Survey: When do you order ancillary tests to determine brain death? Neurology: Clinical Practice has just launched a new Practice Current survey.  Given the broad range of approaches to determining brain death in diverse settings with varying resources, this survey promises to provide interesting insights. Please consider completing the survey to add your own perspective at NPub.org/NCP/pc07.

    The American Academy of Neurology Global Health Section has posted its most recent newsletter - In this issue you'll find information on the Foundation for African Medicine & Education (FAME), Iceland's health care system, observership experiences at the Neuroscience Center of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and The International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science in Paris. 

  • Meet the Editor

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    Dr. Gretchen Birbeck, MD, MPH, DTMH, FAAN, Without Borders Editor, Rochester, NY