Belgian doctors on orthopedic mission

The project

In Benin, unfortunately, children are often born with deformed feet or legs that prevent them from walking. What’s more, their families don’t have the means to pay for the necessary hospital treatment. In addition, health centres often lack qualified personnel.

The Hubi & Vinciane Foundation wants to help these children by organizing orthopedic missions by Belgian surgeons in collaboration with the Saint-Jean de Dieu hospital in Boko.

Target

By organizing orthopedic missions, the Foundation aims not only to give young children the chance to walk normally, but also to strengthen the skills of Benin’s medical teams by sharing its knowledge with Belgian doctors.

Project description

The first mission took place in 2021. Since then, a group of Belgian surgeons travels to Benin once a year for a week to carry out operations with their Beninese colleagues. Beforehand, they examine the various cases sent to them and make an initial selection.

On site, they then examine dozens of children who come to Boko or Papané from all over Benin. They try to operate on as many children as possible, but unfortunately, for some of them, the operation comes too late. Their malformation is already too advanced to be treated. So it’s clear that more frequent missions would be ideal.

Results and trends

During two orthopedic missions to Boko, nearly twenty children were operated on each time, after more than a hundred consultations. During a general surgery mission in Papané, thirty-five operations were carried out after more than four hundred (!) consultations.

The number of consultations shows the importance of the needs of this vulnerable population.
During numerous consultations, the doctors noted that there is also a great need for other specializations, such as pediatric neurology.

Our partners

Doctors at Leuven’s Sacré-Cœur hospital, doctor Reginald Moreels, …