Checking the continuity of the circuit board elements in the anesthetic machine.
Disassembling an oxygen concentrator.
Suited up for a hernia surgery with one of the Cuban doctors
A repaired oxygen concentrator: we taped the humidifier together. As you can see, some of these machines can get really dirty
I’ve just finished up the week at Bansang accompanied by Saiko. It gets extremely hot here (reaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit) almost everyday. It took about 8 hours to reach Bansang, but now I can say I've experienced a lot of the Gambian landscape and have seen most of the villages. At Bansang I was able to visit a fire station, go into surgery with one of the Cuban doctors, see a local concert, and meet some Peace Corps members helping out the town. The hospital at Bansang is the second biggest in Gambia. It is however still very old. Here there are a lot of technically advanced machines, but again they're still old.
A very moving moment happened today. Upon repairing a oxygen concentrator, I was able to see it immediately used by a patient in desperate need of oxygen supplementation. It felt amazing to have such a direct impact on a patient care. It can feel somewhat impersonal when you repair medical devices and don't see the direct or larger picture at hand.
Many machines here are foreign and do not have manuals or instruction guides. Here is some of the equipment I was able to repair though:
- 12 Devilbiss oxygen concentrators
- 2 Autoclaves
- An ultrasound
- A thermal ultrasound
- 3 centrifuges
I also diagnosed several equipment but was unable to fix due to a lack of supplies:
- 3 Devilbiss oxygen concentrators: All need new bottle humidifiers
- Suction machine: needs new motor
- Glostavent anesthetic machine: needs new circuit board element (capacitor)
- Surgical Lamp: new lightbulbs
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