Hanoi (VNA) - The inaugural Southeast Asian Conference of the World Alliance of Airway Management (WAAM) took place at the Hong Ngoc General Hospital and Viet Duc University Hospital in Hanoi on April 13 and 14. The event marked a significant milestone not only in Vietnam but also across Southeast Asia.
The event was organised and facilitated by the UK charity Facing the World (FTW), FTW’s Vietnamese partner hospitals – namely Hong Ngoc, Viet Duc and 108, and the Vietnamese Anesthetic Society, with support from the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines.
It featured 20 presentations by 15 speakers, comprising esteemed experts in anesthesia from both the global and Vietnamese medical communities. These presentations covered specific cases involving respiration – such as facial deformities, laryngeal tumor, underlying medical conditions – and effective management strategies to minimise the risk of mortality.
In his speech delivered at the conference, Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan underscored its importance as an opportunity for Vietnamese anesthesiologists to exchange expertise with world-leading specialists in airway management. This exchange aims to enhance their knowledge and skills, to better safeguard public health.
Thuan went on to highlight the government's significant investment in the healthcare sector for years, with the goal of improving its service quality.
He said that airway management is crucial in anesthesia and critical care, considering it an area of great concern for the Ministry of Health.
Participating experts said the most significant complication in anesthesia is the failure to manage the airway, which can result in immediate patient death or irreversible damage to the central nervous system./.
WAAM is a not-for-profit group that aims to provide a link between Airway Societies and organisations concerned with airway management. Previous world meetings of the Alliance have been attended by thousands of healthcare professionals from over 70 countries.
FTW is a UK-registered medical charitable foundation set up in 2002 to treat children from developing countries with craniofacial defects. The foundation started operations in Vietnam in 2007. To date, it has helped provide surgeries for thousands of children with craniofacial defects across Vietnam and sent over 200 Vietnamese doctors to world class medical institutions in the UK, Canada, the US and Australia for training. The foundation has also donated 2.4 million pounds (roughly 3 million USD) worth of telemedicine technology and surgical equipment to its partner hospitals in Vietnam.
In the next five years, FTW plans to enable a further 40,000 operations to be performed by its trained Vietnamese doctors. It expects to send at least another 200 Vietnamese doctors abroad for training and continue to donate medical equipment.
FTW CEO Katrin Kandel said by facilitating the first WAAM conference in Vietnam, FTW and its partners expect to create opportunities to share medical knowledge and skills through professional exchange and training programmes around the world.
Katrin Kandel, who is a board advisor to WAAM, said the organisation of the event in Vietnam is the result of Vietnamese doctors visiting experts in the UK under FTW-funded training programmes and seeing the benefits of guidelines for difficult airway management./.
