International paediatric surgery specialists provide valuable assistance in several major hospitals in Vietnam – and at the same time bring medical knowledge to the region. Prof. Dr. med. Martin Lacher has been part of these teams several times, operating on newborns and infants with complex malformations.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." This idea shapes the actions of the IPSAC (International Pediatric Specialists Alliance for the Children of Vietnam) initiative. The organisation sends specialists to developing and emerging countries to perform urgently needed operations and at the same time to expand local know-how. This includes not only local specialists but also students from medical and nursing schools and staff in urban children's hospitals.
Prof. Lacher recalls the particular challenges in Vietnam: "The conditions cannot be compared with those in Germany," he says. In Ho Chi Minh City, for example, parents camp with their children in the hospital room, with hammocks serving as sleeping places. In the operating theatre, simple desk lamps have to serve as warming lamps for newborns, and the equipment does not meet Western standards. "Nevertheless, you can work even with few resources."
Despite these circumstances, Prof. Lacher and the team performed highly complex procedures. These included operations on the oesophagus or small intestine, but also the treatment of choledochal cysts, a cystic dilation of the bile ducts that is relatively common in Vietnam. Three such cases were successfully operated on minimally invasively via laparoscopy.
A central aspect of every assignment is the transfer of knowledge: before and after each operation, the international specialists exchange ideas intensively with their Vietnamese colleagues, explaining techniques, discussing procedures and giving practical tips. In this way, the specialists quickly learn to understand and apply new methods themselves – entirely in the sense of the "learning to fish" metaphor. Step by step, sustainable structures are created that will benefit children in Vietnam in the long term.
