Due to emerging infectious diseases, new treatments of known diseases (e.g. HIV, malaria) and rapidly changing international guidelines on treatment and prevention, international paediatrics grows ever more complex. In the Netherlands, the Dutch government (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Defence) and various NGOs are daily involved in Global Child Health. In many cases, however, the involved staff members have had no specific training in paediatrics and the organisation usually does not employ its own paediatric advisor. Moreover, it is often hard for the organisations to find the right advisor with the required know-how to answer specific questions from the field. By setting up a Global Child Health knowledge centre, the Global Child Health Group at the Emma Children’s Hospital AMC, led by Prof. B. Brabin, wants to make a contribution to the solution of this problem. The GCH knowledge centre consists of a group of paediatricians from the Emma Children’s Hospital AMC itself and from a number of academic child clinics in the Netherlands and abroad. Since 2006, paediatric support is extended to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF-OCA) by means of courses, e-mail advice service, developing protocols and site visits (evaluation of the paediatric care and bed-side teaching for the local staff).
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