The Design of Special Burn Unit in BHUTH

Abstract

Burn patients represent the most severe model of trauma and require special attention: disinfection, systemic support, and local site care. Thus, a special care unit of burn patients is required and many developed countries employed this system. However, in many developing countries burn unit is not yet widely deployed. We here briefly describe our experience of newly starting burn care unit in Nigeria. In the Bingham University Teaching Hospital (Central Nigeria in Jos Plateau State), we established a new unit for burn care, which is located just adjacent to ICU. So far, this unit received 1-3 burn patients per month, with death rate for adult and paediatric severe burn patients being 6.4% and 14.9%, respectively. We have not yet accumulated data whether this unit actually yielded a better prognosis than before, we believe that special unit for burn care will surely improve burn patients’ care/treatment. The present description may be of some use for planning to establish burn unit in developing countries.