From Stephen:
This week finds our team in the beautiful Butare (Huye). Long the academic hub of the country, the city’s highland setting provides for cooler breezes and more temperate weather than frenetic Kigali. The contemplative weather plays welcome host to this week’s latest adventure: the first ever international pain conference held in Rwanda.
Another achievement in the long collaboration between CASIEF and the Rwandan anaesthesia residency programme, the ZeroPain conference has been organized in its entirety through local expertise. Pain experts among our team, Drs. Mary, Patty, and Jon, stand as equals amongst other local and international invitees to deliver locally tailored content and solicit ideas on future research needs. ZeroPain is truly a coming of age for the Butare Pain Team and their ability to chart their own course as they set out to conquer unrecognized and untreated pain in Rwanda.
With topics from safety in regional anaesthesia, to empowering nurse led recognition of pain, locally informed pain pharmacology, to the vast potential of micro-research, the conference has had broad appeal. Equally broad has been its reach! In polling the audience, we discovered that the conference is playing host to nurses, physiotherapists, social workers, non-physician anaesthetists, residents and staff anaesthetists, and researchers!
In reflecting on the accomplishment this conference represents, I feel something needs be said about the dedication of the attendees themselves. Despite a very busy conference schedule (grueling might actually be more apt), the attendees were unflagging in their attention. While my concentration drifted, the attendees were busy scribbling notes; there was hardly a distracted cell phone scrawl to be seen. The need for a paradigm shift towards the recognition and treatment of pain in stoic Rwanda is desperate; if the indefatigable attention of the conference attendees is any indication, the appetite for change is clearly equal to the task.
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| Gaston, conference Chair |
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| Rediet, Mary and Patty |
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| Servent (senior anesthesia resident) with two medical students |
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