Layperson first responder trainings to improve trauma care for civilian casualties of explosive violence

Modern armed conflict is increasingly characterized by the use of explosive weapons against civilian populations, creating new injury patterns with need for rapid first aid close to the point of injury. In many places where these injuries occur, formal trauma systems or prehospital trauma care do not exist, contributing to a case fatality rate that is approximately five times higher than that observed in military treatment facilities or high-resource civilian trauma centers. Layperson First Responder (LFR) trainings have been delivered in an ad-hoc manner in a range of non-conflict settings with evidence for improvement in trainee knowledge and skill, but ultimately without the strategies to scale for greater implementation. The proposed project addresses this gap by creating pathways for partnership between the humanitarian mine action sector within the Global Protection Cluster and health stakeholders in low-resource conflict settings to deliver LFR training in communities affected by explosive violence, focusing on Burkina Faso as a pilot setting. This project has system-wide implications for humanitarian response through improved coordination between the health and protection clusters with the potential to scale across a variety of settings in armed conflict to reduce preventable morbidity and mortality among civilian victims of explosive violence.