Where has the time gone?

How time flies! Today is our last day in Africa. Kind of sad, but everyone is looking forward to going to Norway. For the past few days we have been traveling around, first to Mbeya in the southern part of Tanzania then to the lovely island of Zanzibar. We haven’t had access to stable internet so its time to catch up on what we’ve been up to!

The trip to Mbeya was quite exciting for everyone. The plane we flew in was much smaller than any plane that many of us had been on before. This made for a bumpier ride, but a much better view. Adam even got to ride in the copilot seat for one leg of the trip!

One of Jhpiego’s staff, Dr. Kanga, accompanied us on our trip to Mbeya. He was very nice and a pleasure to work with. Upon arriving in Mbeya we stopped by our hotel for a couple minutes then headed to Mbeya Regional Hospital. They were in the process of expanding the hospital and hoped to have a couple of new building built within the next five years. The most striking part of this hospital was its laboratory, which was donated by Abbott in the past year. The biggest problem in the lab was equipment breaking down due to the irregularity of the power. It is also hard to do maintenance on the equipment because spare parts are hard to find and it is difficult to get people to come out and repair the equipment.

The next day we visited the Medical Stores Department (MSD). MSD is run by the government and is where hospitals/clinics order their medical supplies, drugs, and equipment. After that we sat in on a BEmONC training session. During the session we were able to demonstrate the ePartogram, a blood pressure device, the antenatal screening pen, and Laerdal’s MamaNatatlie. Later on that day we went to Meta Maternity Hospital where Adam, Luke, and Divya were able to check out the operating theater and everyone else went to check out the maternity ward and the neonatal ward.

On the 20th we left Mbeya and headed to Zanzibar, arriving in the evening. The next day we went to Makunduchi Hospital on the southern part of the island. It was over an hour drive from hour hotel. We saw a few colobus monkeys on the way, our first animal sighting of the trip.

Makunduchi was a nice facility, especially the maternity ward which had been recently redone. The next day we ate breakfast on the roof of our hotel, which had a great view of the ocean. After breakfast we visited Mnazi Mmoja, the only referral hospital on the entire island. It was very, very busy. Apparently we were there on a slower day though, because not all of the beds were full. We heard that sometimes pregnant women even have to share beds. We were shown around the maternity ward and the engineering department. Next we visited Muembeladu. They had fairly nice facilities for mothers and babies with a lot of spare beds because there weren’t very many women there that day. As the care providers receive better training, hopefully they will be able to take some of the load off the referral hospital.

In the afternoon we were given a tour of Stone Town, there area where our hotel was located. We learned some history about slave trade and were able to see some of the local markets. For dinner we ate at an Italian restaurant on the beach. It was a fun, relaxing way to end our time on Zanzibar.

Today we gave a presentation to the staff at Jhpiego of things we had seen and learned over the past couple weeks. They were able to give us some very good feedback.

Tomorrow we depart for Norway to visit Laerdal Medical. We are looking forward to meeting up with the other teams and hearing about all of their experiences! If you want to see what they’ve been up to you can check out their blogs here:

Ethiopia

Nepal

India

-Luke

Change of Plans – Preparing for Mbeya

Alright everyone! We previously said that half the group would be visiting Kilimanjaro and the other half would head to Arusha (both located in northern Tanzania). However, the JHPIEGO staff determined that the group would get more out of going to Mbeya (in western Tanzania). There will be a BEmONC (Basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care) session going on at that time, giving us the opportunity to see the skills that healthcare providers are expected to have in order to provide the best care for their patients. As a result, we got an extra day to spend in Dar Es Salaam since our flight to Mbeya won’t leave until tomorrow morning. Since this was an unexpected change in plans, we got the chance to explore some more of Dar Es Salaam. We started at the National Museum of Tanzania, which was composed of exhibits focusing on the history of Tanzania. They also had some really cool fossils from prehistoric times! Afterwards we went to another market where we were constantly being ushered into little shops to buy more wooden statues and various trinkets. Managing to hold back, we left and headed off for some Tanzanian food. We then came back to the Markham and began packing – making sure to make room for all the souvenirs that we all bought! We’ll be heading out at 5:50 am tomorrow so I think it’ll be an early night for all of us. We’ll make sure to give you guys an update once we reach Mbeya, depending on our internet connection. Bye for now!

~Divya

Mission Mikocheni and the Laerdal Symposium

We had an excellent day today, though a bit different from what we’ve been doing currently. For the first half of the day, we went to a private hospital called Mission Mikocheni; it was our first time at a hospital that wasn’t government funded and it was very different from what we’ve seen before. Much of the equipment there was similar to western hospitals (especially a brand new ultrasound machine that was the same model as we had seen at Hopkins during our rotations in June-July), and the organization was similar to a western hospital too, with patients all assigned to a personal doctor. Unlike previous hospitals, it wasn’t crowded either; entire sections of empty seats were a strange view after seeing hospitals where patients were lined up outside, sitting on the ground. There were two sections of the hospital as well, one for the middle class patients and one for the upper class patients; they even had two reception areas and two laboratories. The private rooms for the wealthier patients even had flat screen televisions and refrigerators.

One of the last places we visited at Mission Mikocheni was the maternity ward. Where previous wards had been wood and plaster walls and had fit three women to a bed, stepping into the Mission Mikocheni Maternity Ward was like entering another world. Every patient had her own bed, and the labor room was outfitted with completely new equipment. The “Executive Labor Room” even had a jacuzzi.

Later in the afternoon we had a symposium, hosted by Jhpiego and the Laerdal Foundation. Everyone leading the various programs in Tanzania spoke, including the directors of Helping Babies Breath, focused on neonatal resuscitation, and Maisha, focused on antenatal care of mothers. It was a amazing experience; we got to hear from a lot of experienced people, both from the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Jhpiego, who discussed the enormous efforts they have put into reducing infant and mother mortality. Tore Laerdal, the CEO of Laerdal Medical and the head of the board of the Laerdal Foundation, also spoke on the current Laerdal Medical products for the developing world, including the birthing simulator MamaNatalie and the neonatal resuscitation simulator NeoNatalie. We received a demo of the birthing simulator (you can see it below) and the alliance between CBID, Jhpiego, and Laerdal (innovation, distribution, and manufacturing respectively) was presented as well. Everyone was really excited and we’re honored to be a member of a such a prestigious alliance. It’s amazing to think that, with the help of Jhpiego and Laerdal, our innovations can make it to the developing world in a remarkably short period of time.

 

It was an great day and we’re all looking forward to working with Laerdal and moving forward with our global health projects.

~James

Monday Ventures

Today was an interesting day. We started off the day by heading to the University of Dar es Salaam. The campus was huge!! We met with the head of the bioengineering department there and he showed us the current projects they are working on, including a new autoclave.

Later on in the afternoon we went to the Temeke district hospital. The traffic was terrible so it took a while to get there, but the trip was definitely worth it. Temeke was a nice facility and fairly modern compared to some of the other places we visited. We were surprised to learn that there are between 70 and 100 births per day at that facility! One nurse helped deliver over 600 babies in a period of three months. We also found out that sometimes up to three pregnant women have to share a single bed. While at Temeke we were pleasantly surprised by the arrival of the board from the Laerdal Foundation. They were all very nice and we are looking forward to spending more time with them tomorrow!

-Luke

Bongoyo Island

Yesterday we had a free day and decided to head to Bongoyo Island. We took a small boat to a bigger boat which we took to the Island. There all of us CBIDers went snorkeling for the first time, with some helpful advice and tips from our new friend Olav from Laerdal. I took some cool underwater pics with my “waterproof” camera and the video copied below. Shortly thereafter my camera stopped working… Worth it? Yes.

We also ate on the island and relaxed under a banda (umbrella hut thing). It was a really relaxing day and a good bonding experience. It was a beautiful day and afterwards we headed back to the outdoor market at the Slipway and did some shopping. Finally, we all sat down and ate a nice dinner at the same place a few of us had gone last week, the Waterfront Bar & Grill.

Best day ever.

Adam

Shree Hindu Mandal Hospital

Today, we got the opportunity to visit one of the private hospitals in Dar Es Salaam – Shree Hindu Mandal Hospital. This hospital was in much better condition in comparison to many of the other hospitals we had visited throughout the week. A hospital administrator and nurse spent some time with us, looking at the prototypes that Shoval, Sunny and Olav brought along. They were very excited by these projects and are planning to have a follow-up meeting with more midwives sometime early next week! We also met with the biomedical engineer who fixes the broken down equipment at the Hindu Mandal Hospital. He mentioned that the most common equipment failures are in autoclaves, suction devices and microscopes. One of the biggest challenges they face is the lack of spare parts and many times they order spare parts from India.

After visiting the hospital, Maryjane and Natalie treated us to dinner at the Yacht Club. The view was absolutely gorgeous!!

We got a chance to enjoy the beach and then have some pizza :) Thank you Maryjane and Natalie!!

~Divya

New Pictures!

Hello again! Here are some of our favorite pictures that we’ve taken recently. Be sure to check out all of our pictures HERE.

Africa

This song has been stuck in our heads all week… bet you can’t figure out why!

 

Luke’s Birthing Simulation Video

Check out this birthing simulation that Luke helped out with:

Day 6: The other (more awesome) group

The rest of us (Sunny, Adam, Divya, and Luke) made an hour and a half trek to the district hospital in Bagamoyo. It was a decent sized facility, but relatively uncrowded compared to some of the other places we visited this week. We were accompanied by Natalie and Albert from Jhpiego and Honest from the Ministry of Health.

We started our tour with the waste management section of the hospital. It consisted of a small building where bags were autoclaved and then sent off to be burned. The hospital generates roughly 12 bags of trash per day, but are only able to autoclave 2 per day. Autoclaved syringes were put through a shredder and the plastic was stored. As of right now there is no one who can make use of the plastic so it just sits in piles in the building.

Next stop on the tour was the theater a.k.a. the operating room. Adam and I got to wear some spiffy white boots as we walked around to check out the equipment and the facilities. The OR was much different than the ones we had seen during our rotations at Johns Hopkins earlier in the summer. One of the biggest problems that they had was that their equipment tended to rust very quickly due to the proximity of the clinic to the ocean (it was less than 1 km away!). While Adam and I explored the OR, the rest of the group went to the maternity ward.

We finished our tour by visiting the pharmacy and the laboratory. Both of these sections were larger and had better equipment than similar part of the other places we had visited. While in the laboratory we demonstrated the antenatal pen to the staff. They like the idea very much and wanted to know when they would be able to have some to use.

After the tour we went to eat lunch at a place next door that was part of a resort. The food was delicious and the scenery was gorgeous!

Stay tuned for a video of me helping to do a demonstration at one of the clinics! We will post it as soon as our internet connection is good enough.

 

-Luke