Austere Anesthesia Health Outcomes Research Group

Safe Anesthesia & Surgery in Sierra Leone Initiative (SASSL)

The Safe Anesthesia & Surgery in Sierra Leone Initiative (SASSL) is a multidisciplinary grouping of projects that contribute to the improved safety and capacity of perioperative medical services in Sierra Leone. Projects within the initiative will expand over time, but currently include the below three programs.

Anesthesia Education
By collaborating with the Health Volunteers Overseas organization (www.hvousa.org) we have generated a number of nurse and physician anesthesia educators who are prepared to travel to Sierra Leone for varying amounts of time. They will integrate with the existing curriculum and assist the only two anesthesia physicians in the nation in their mission to train nurse anesthetists to meet the needs of the country.

Research and Equipment Donation
Much of the anesthesia related equipment in the Western World is not designed to meet the needs and demands of low-income countries and is priced high. We would like to bring in new anesthesia machines that are designed for environments where compressed gases are not consistently available and measure the impact that these machines will have on the safety and capacity of surgery in Sierra Leone. In doing this we would like to develop educational and training material customized toward the safe utilization of these machines.

Perioperative equipment donated from Walter Reed Army Medical Center
We have been made aware of the donation of valuable medical equipment from the recently closed Walter Reed Army Medical Center to Liberia and Ghana. Our group does not want to see Sierra Leone miss out on this opportunity and would like to facilitate the transfer of some of this material to locations in Sierra Leone that are capable of effectively utilizing this equipment. We are in direct communication with the leaders of this equipment transfer from Walter Reed and are working toward the identification of the remaining equipment that would be useful and appropriate to the current situation in Sierra Leone.