The Chaco demonstration outreach project successfully trained non-genetic health professionals to include genetics in their daily practice at primary and secondary health care facilities. The training not only enabled professionals to provide appropriate interventions to a population that lacked infrastructure and economic resources but also demonstrated and encouraged government action to generalise the programme to a number of other provinces. Based upon the CAPABILITY Chaco capacity building model, the Garrahan
Hospital, Buenos Aires, the CAPABILITY partner institution, decided to provide financial support from within Argentina to build a cytogenetic laboratory in the capital of the Province of Chaco. Training of the technicians for this laboratory was also sponsored. The training project in Chaco exponentially buy SU5416 increased the number of consultations and samples being selleck kinase inhibitor analysed in the laboratory, overwhelming
the laboratory capacity and creating the need for the installation of additional laboratories in Chaco and other provinces of the country. This resulted in the creation of a network of new cytogenetic laboratories sponsored by the Garrahan Foundation. The Garrahan Foundation continues sponsoring the training model for genetics in the provinces as well as the training of personnel for the new laboratories Lonafarnib clinical trial within the network of cytogenetic laboratories. Based on the CAPABILITY Argentina project in Chaco, the National Ministry of Health decided to VAV2 implement a genetic programme in other provinces in northeast Argentina. The education material developed by CAPABILITY Argentina is now used nationwide and is continually updated. Greater Sekhukhune is one of six health districts in Limpopo province, South Africa. It is a rural area with one regional hospital as the major centre of care for a population of one million; although there are molecular and cytogenetic laboratories in South Africa, distance and a lack of resources means that they are not easily accessible to those away from the main centres of population. The knowledge and experience gained from the South African “Greater Sekhukune CAPABILITY outreach project”
described by Arnold Christianson et. al has serious implications for the development of genetic services in Limpopo Province, and by extension in South Africa, showing how severely affected are the primary and secondary care services by staff shortages (migration/brain drain) and the HIV/AIDS and TB epidemics. Developing appropriate genetic services in these circumstances is difficult. The paper recommends HNA as an objective way to clarify matters as they stand in South Africa today and to plan future medical services for the care and prevention of congenital and genetic disorders. Undertaking these outreach demonstration projects in different health care systems has demonstrated that genetics services need not be a minority service for the wealthy (or for those living in developed health care economies).