July 18, 2024
As NeuroKids, the global nonprofit, celebrates its fourth anniversary, we are pleased to announce the start of a novel training and treatment program in Zambia. Dedicated to ensuring that children with hydrocephalus and spina bifida live longer and better lives, NeuroKids’ new partnership with the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka will build on the hospital’s capabilities and capacity to save the lives of more children throughout the country.
At a launch event in Lusaka, more than 60 people from across the Zambian development sector, including USAID and the Zambian Ministry of Health, and a US-based team from NeuroKids met to further the goal to empower our partners to extend access to surgical treatment and care for children with hydrocephalus and spina bifida.
The NeuroKids team, led by founder Dr. Benjamin Warf and Senior Trainer Dr. John Mugamba, trained Zambian neurosurgeons in the Warf Method, an innovative approach that combines endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) and choroid plexus cauterization (CPC), mitigating the need for shunt placement, the traditional treatment for hydrocephalus.
The Warf Method has been tested and proven as an alternative to shunt placement. Its outcomes are as safe and effective as shunts while requiring far less medical infrastructure and post-surgical maintenance. It is particularly effective in the Global South, where the risks of infection from shunts are greater, and there are many more cases of hydrocephalus.
NeuroKids is the world leader in surgically treating and caring for children with hydrocephalus and spina bifida in the Global South. Now in its fourth year, this new engagement in Zambia brings the number of countries where NeuroKids is supporting the introduction of the Warf method to thirteen.
Nearly a million babies are affected by hydrocephalus and spina bifida every year. Most of them are from countries that make up the Global South. Without surgery, the vast majority will not survive, and the ones that do will be profoundly disabled. Help us change that reality and give these children and their families hope for a longer and better quality of life.
