Cleaning house….

This past weekend I stayed in Ankaase to help clean up a trailer full of donated medical supplies. I usually go to my parent’s house in Kumasi (less than 20 miles away) during the weekend. The emergency room physician, Dr. Nkansah, organized this exercise when he discovered that there was a trailer of medical supplies. Some of these had been donated by various groups a very long time ago. There were items that couldn’t be used because of the lack of trained personnel while some were also incomplete equipment. We had some guys from the laboratory unit helping with the cleaning who discovered hundreds of petri dishes and micro pipettes and were very excited.  We began around 8am and stopped at at 1pm because of the extreme heat. It was almost 95 degrees by noon. Of course, the temperature kept rising.

Dr. Nkansah (ER MD) going through boxes. Yes, those are shoes:)

Wheelchairs and IV poles

Mr. Francis (materials manager) hard at work in the trailer

We were also discovered hundreds of ambu-bags (bag-valve mask device). Dr. Nkansah and I were ecstatic about this. We have been looking for appropriate sized ones for the emergency unit and also for the hospital. These bags are very essential in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Pile of unusable materials. The boxes and yellow cans were recycled

Some of the guys taking a much needed break. All the boxes on the left are full of ambu-bags

I talked about an infant with cleft lip in my last post. We found out that the “big” hospital here can perform the corrective surgery for him. This is “free” but the family has to come up with 1500 Cedis (about $400) to help with post-surgical care and medicines for the baby. We have been talking to the social service department of our hospital for financial support for this family. We are hopeful that God will continue to work his miracles for this family and provide the much needed help.