Gastroenterology Fellows Experience Global Health

Twice a year, a group of gastroenterology fellows from AMPATH consortium schools led by Dr. Thomas Carr (North America) and Dr. Fatma Some (Kenya) participate in a 3-week elective at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. The program, created in 2016, is designed to expose GI fellows to the practice of gastroenterology in the global health context, under supervision of AMPATH faculty. 

Each fellow provides GI consults on the wards at MTRH, rounding with the Medicine ward teams daily.  Procedural skills that are not common in the US, such as minimally sedated endoscopy and placement of endoscopic esophageal stents are taught at MTRH.  Esophageal stenting is a strength of the elective as fellows are able to place 10-20 stents in the elective. 

Soon, the GI fellows may be granted additional educational opportunities because of a new collaboration between the IU School of Medicine’s Division of Digestive and Liver Disease (DaLD) and the Global Engineering Program (GEP) of the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University.  This collaboration seeks to develop prototypes for esophageal stents that are inexpensive with a low complication potential.  DaLD gastroenterology fellows and GEP students are expected to participate in device fabrication and animal research product development. They will be assisted by Moi University collaborators, who will be critical in developing the next phase; a next-level study to test the perfected device in the clinical setting in Kenya.