Global Alliance of Perioperative Professionals

The Global Alliance of Perioperative Professionals’ mission is to provide relevant, appropriate, affordable and sustainable solutions to improve anesthesia and perioperative care in austere environments. Led by Executive Director John Sampson, MD and Assistant Director Promise Ariyo, MD and consisting of Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine Faculty members Rahul Koka, Tina Tran, Michael Banks, Adam Schiavi, Christina Miller, and School of Nursing faculty Vinciya Pandiyan, GAPP has been focused on two funded projects – one involving the use of the Universal Anesthesia Machine in Sierra Leone and the other focusing on educating and implementing universal precaution infection control practices in Abuja Nigeria and Northern Ghana. 

In addition to infection control education, the Global Alliance of Perioperative Professionals has also delivered a project that evaluated the usability, safety, durability and impact of the use of the Universal Anesthesia Machine in two tertiary care hospitals in Sierra Leone. After learning that many hospitals receiving support for anesthesia machines purchased state-of-the-art machines that were not useable in the current hospital environments due to lack of stable electricity or compressed oxygen, GAPP received funding to purchase and provide the necessary training and education for the Universal Anesthesia Machine, which can operate at a fraction of the cost during temporary power failures and using an oxygen concentrator or room air. This work was recently highlighted by NPR here and here.