Mansoura Specialized Medical Hospital

Mansoura faculty of medicine was founded in 1962 as a branch of Cairo University. In 1972, a presidential decree announced the establishment of t he University under the name "East Delta University". Later on, its name was changed to Mansoura University in 1973.

The Specialized Medical Hospital is one of the medical centres of Mansoura university. The hospital provides the most advanced medical services to a large number of patients in the Nile Delta region.

Diabetic foot is a devastating complication of diabetes for both patients and health care providers. Gangrene and amputation is usually wrongly considered as synonym for diabetic foot, although a lot of symptoms and signs usually precede such advanced pathology by several years. Strangely enough, is that of all chronic complications of diabetes, foot problems and their risk factors are the easiest to detect and the simplest to prevent. Most of the studies suggested that simple interventions can reduce amputations by up to 50-80%.

Diabetic foot service is still far away from the standards of care in the majority of developing countries, partly due to patients unawareness and partly to low aw areness among health care providers with the importance of early detection of the disease. The lack of podiatrist represent another barrier against the establishment of appropriate foot care in developing countries.

The aim of this website is to improve foot care for diabetic patients by providing patient education through Arabic language, providing scientific information for health care providers and by presenting the services provided by Mansoura Diabetes foot clinic, the first centre of excellence of foot care in Egypt.

Step by Step Project:

The aim of the project is to increase awareness with foot problems in diabetes among patients and health care providers. The project is funded by the World Diabetes Foundation. As a key part of the "Step by Step" model, training of 30 medical teams; each consisting of a doctor and a nurse will be done. The doctors and nurses will be selected from medical centers with a high attendance of people with diabetes. The training will be executed during two courses; a basic course and an advanced one.

The Basic Course

Consists of a 3-day practical training program starting from 11 to 13 November 2009. The participants were taught the essential practical knowledge needed to thoroughly examine the feet of their patients and deal with any risk factor. Emphasis was also made to acquire teaching skills and enable the participants to educate their patients and circulate the gained knowledge to their colleagues in their locality and thereby creating a spin-off effect.
The teams will actively participate by screening the foot of their diabetic patients and recording the data of their patients.

The Advanced Course

After one year, the trained teams will be called for an advanced course during which the elements from the basic course will be examined at a higher level. The advanced course has an emphasis on interactive sessions focusing on sharing of experience among the trained teams. The teams present and discuss cases experienced in their respective clinics over the past year. Data collection will be done by the end of the second year to estimate the impact of the project on decreasing the rate of amputation in Egypt.
The advanced course will be held at Mansoura from 2 to 4 December 2010.