The Karolinska Institutet - Carl Bennet partnership on critical care in Southeast Asia
The year started off with a visit by the Getinge leadership team to the Global Child Health & SDGs group. During the visit, ongoing research and doctoral programs in Indonesia and Vietnam, in collaboration with Carl Bennet, were discussed. Critical care initiatives, focusing on mothers and newborns, conducted in partnership with Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya, Indonesia, and Phu San Hanoi Hospital in Vietnam, was presented. Additionally, progress was reviewed and future plans were outlined.
The meeting with Carl Bennet, Mattias Perjos, Miray Kärnekull, Anders Hägglund and Christian Samuelson started off with an overview of the department by Marie Hasselberg followed by an introduction by Tobias Alfvén to global child health and critical care. Nicolas Pejovic gave examples of the research that is ongoing in Vietnam on neonatal resuscitation with Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) and Surfactant Administration with LMA (SALSA). All participants at the meeting got an opportunity to try their hands to ventilate newborns and perform a SALSA in a simulation exercise with the help of Nicolas Pejovic and Susanna Myrnerts-Höök (coordinator for the KI-Phu San research & PhD project).
The collaboration with UNAIR in Surabaya has reached important milestones with institutional and research agreements signed off and the four intended PhD students, three from Indonesia, one from Sweden, all working on their research plans on different aspects of emergency and critical care with a systems lens, covering topics, such as: unmet needs for critical care and experiences and cost of ECMO provision in east Java; barriers to the implementation of effective preeclampsia management and novel risk models compared to established risk models in critical care settings; the neonatal patient’s journey through the health care system; and, neonatal deaths by level of care as well as coverage of emergency critical care. Mattias Schedwin (coordinatior for the KI-UNAIR research & PhD project), updated all on progress on the research and PhD twinning program, supported by supervisors at KI and UNAIR.
The academic collaboration in Indonesia is a new initiative, part of the Sweden-Indonesia Sustainability Partnership, initiated through high level discussions between ministries of both countries, Business Sweden, Carl Bennet and academic partners. Mariam Claeson explained how this partnership is spearheading a novel trade-to-aid model, while the partnership in Vietnam builds on long-term collaboration between the two countries, on clinical research to improve maternal and newborn health between teams at Phu San hospital and the Karolinska Institutet. The partnership with Carl Bennet opens a new phase in this long-term relationship, in support of the SALSA RCT trial and affiliated studies, PhD twinning program (two PhD students from Vietnam, two from Sweden), a centre of excellence simulation lab, and an international seminar event.
"We look forward to launching all PhD research plans in 2025, to continue learning together and sharing experiences, with the hope that this collaboration will yield results that will inform not only local guidelines but improve global policies to bring down neonatal mortality - an increasing share of preventable deaths in children globally", says Mariam Claeson.