We spent much of the day in the electro-medical maintenance shop with the maintenance team, comprised of 5 technicians (for the entire hospital).
We had a long discussion related to the workings and challenges of equipment management and were provided the following information.
The electro-medical technicians have not received any formal training, but do have some background in electronics. They rely primarily on experience and team work to solve problems.
Equipment is either purchased by the government or donated from various sources. Most of the sophisticated (expensive) machines are acquired from South Africa.
A large percentage of machines are presently malfunctioning or broken and no standard protocols for equipment restoration are in place.
The internal maintenance team repairs and services the smaller, less sophisticated machines. Larger equipment maintenance is managed through sub-contracts with manufacturing companies (often located in South Africa), and hence, access to service is inconsistent and unreliable.
The hospital cannot bear the cost of outsourced technical services and consumables are difficult to attain. Service and maintenance manuals are often missing or lost, and if present, are frequently printed in English (rather than Portuguese, the official language of Mozambique). In addition, users are not receptive to preventative maintenance protocols.
The above are some of the challenges (related to biomedical infrastructure) that the hospital faces.
The team was amenable to the idea of hosting students from Drexel to work alongside them, asserting that they would find such as arrangement to be "very advantageous".
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