Give burn survivors access to rehabilitation

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic brought many difficulties and hardships in 2021. In the case of our partners working in burns, pressure put on their local health system by the disease, repetitive lockdowns, and disruptions in access to resource constantly put to the test their ability to continue delivering rehabilitation services to their burn patients. The pandemic also complicated their access to continuous professional training.

Although Covid-19 made in-person training practically impossible, Sunshine Foundation continued to provide to our partners comprehensive training and follow-up online:

1. We organized an online training for 12 therapists and seamstresses from Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala on advanced pressure garment fabrication techniques. During this two-month project, participants learned about fitting and pressure garment modification techniques that are crucial to ensure good fit and adequate pressure of the garment. Also, “troubleshooting” online courses examined specific fabrication problems, explained the causes and provided solution on how to avoid or solve these problems.
2. We organized an introductory online training on the rehabilitation of the burned hand for therapists in Latin America. A total of 65 therapists from 10 countries took part to learn over a period of two months about basic concepts (hand anatomy, common post-burn hand deformities and their mechanism, etc.) and the principles to carry out an evaluation of the burned hand to identify problems and treatment priorities.

With your support, we will continue to provide our partners with online trainings in 2022 to ensure that they can continue to strengthen their rehabilitation knowledge and apply it towards providing quality burn rehabilitation care to their patients. We need your help to implement:

• A one-month course on the interventions for the rehabilitation of the burned hand, at different stages of healing.
• A one-month course on the application of pressure therapy tools and interventions for the rehabilitation of the burned hand.
• The ongoing development of short and helpful educational resources (blogs, how-to videos, checklists, etc.) that can be easily shared on our new training website and Youtube channel.

With your support, we can continue to build burn rehabilitation capacity of our international partners in 2022.