Michiel and Anja in Sengerema:

Collaborating on New Operating Rooms and Education

For the next 4 weeks, Michiel Bijkerk (anesthesiologist) and Anja van den Boom (OR assistant) will be in Sengerema to help set up the new operating rooms and provide education to the surgery and anesthesia staff.

It’s great to be back in Sengerema with Michiel and to see Jiska and Erik again.
This week has been mainly focused on organizing the stores and gathering materials and instruments. Once that's done, we can reassemble the sets in consultation with the OR assistants.

Michiel has also been sorting and organizing materials, but for anesthesia. A thorough clean-up is needed there too. In addition, the new anesthesia equipment needs to be assembled and made operational. The gas analyzer, which we had a hard time getting into Tanzania, is working well.

On Thursday, a container donated by Thomas Kuhn, a former German orthopedic surgeon who collects supplies for Africa, arrived. Among the items for us were an operating table and OR lamps. It was quite a task to unload the container.

Meanwhile, Anastasia and Vivian have been busy making new OR caps and flags.