Our funding at work!

Sorry for the delay in posting ... our last few days have been full of travel in places with little or no wifi.

Here are a few photos to illustrate where our generous donated items and funds went:

It took about 10 days to clear our suitcases full of medication,  surgical equipment, bicycle parts, electrical supplies and hardware of all sorts as well as a full suitcase of soccer equipment, soccer & basket balls!  Our colleagues on site are used to dealing with the customs and worked their magic to make it happen. Nothing lost in the process.

Time to open the suitcases! Jeff was happy to see that all is equipment has arrived!

After spending some time sorting out the equipment we starting distributing all our goodies to the different sections of the hospital.

Operating Theatre:

20 boxes of heavy sutures, specialized foley catheters, head lamps for when the generator or electricity goes down. 

Maternity:

 fetal ultrasound monitors and suction delivery devices (kiwis) for difficult deliveries - this can be life saving - every minutes counts when the baby is in distress.

Laboratory:

Blood sugar test strips at 1$ each - an expense that is well out of reach for this tight budget hospital 

Children's Ward:

Julien and Mathieu joined me on a Saturday to distribute the knitted dolls that one of my patient's had so generously made. The boys made sure that the boys received boy dolls and the girls pink dolls.  This was an eye-opener for my children.  They asked many questions on the walk home about sickness, health, burns etc.

Pharmacy:

This was my favorite stop.  After hearing every monday at our departmental meeting about the drugs in low supply or unavailable - the drugs we brought were going to be immediately useful 

The pharmacist said that her favorite drug that we brought was the IV Ceftiaxone.  IV antibiotics are always hard to come by.  They are more expensive and these days in Zimbabwe cash is in short supply and therefore the suppliers are having a hard time stocking even this basic drug.  It is also most needed for the sickest patients, including the surgical patients who's bowels are not working.

The Bicycle parts brought from Canada including Tire Liners and tubes were used on a daily basis! the number of repairs done over our stay was a great achievement also another few weeks would have been welcomed.


The workshop was a small but busy room with sometimes up to 3 person working inside and outside on bikes and people waiting outside during the day patiently waiting for their bikes to be fixed!