Guatemala
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 2:43 pm
George
I'm returning to Uspantan for my second medical mission trip up there. My wife, younger daughter, and I went last summer and my oldest daughter went during both of the preceding two summers. All four of us are going this trip.
Our group of 85 people did 72 major surgeries, saw 1,600 people in medical, vision, and dental clinics, and installed 150 Onil stoves in the huts that the indigenous Mayans live in. My wife's an OB-GYN surgeon, and I am the "MacGuyver" for the trip...keeping things working with duct tape, solder, baling wire, and whatever is needed. We work in an old US-built hospital that's basically sealed up except for the 10 days a year that we are there...so there's a lot of deterioration of systems and infrastructure...even though they do keep it spotlessly clean.
Last year we swapped a refrigeration compressor out of the morgue body cooler for the dead one in the walk-in refrigerator...you might be mildly interested to learn that propane works just fine if no freon is available (no, we didn't LEAVE it charged when we left the hospital). I also stopped the drips in about 2 dozen rotted-out P-traps under sinks by wrapping them with surgical gloves overlayed with electrical tape. Since all of the faucet stems are shot and the water in the sinks basically runs most of the time whenever the pumps are going, that can be a lot of drip.
None of the flourescent lights in the building work except for the ones where we have replaced magnetic ballasts with electronic ballasts...the "local" who oversees the generator (which kicks in whenever the power grid goes down...which is several times a day) was "taught" that the way to conserve funds was to cut back on the rpm's to the point where the generator is still producing the requisite voltage...which, of course, means that it's producing about 40 cycles...way uncool for motors, transformers, and a lot of electrical goodies. The only thing it DOESN'T seem to affect is the tungsten light bulbs, but the surges do those in with great regularity. Needless to say, all of our sensitive medical (and computer) equipment is run from an uninterruptible power supply, although we have had some unfortunate losses over the years.
We actually carted a laparoscopic tower down with us last year and did the first lap surgeries in the whole country...in a rural hospital in the mountains, 70 miles out of Guatemala City (and 7 hours on a paved road).
It's a lot like being out on a boat...without the boat...you do what you have to do with whatever you have available.
This is all done under the umbrella of HELPS International (based in Dallas, TX) who've been doing this for 25 years now...
go to http://helpsinternational.org for more info on some of what we do. The stove project is particularly interesting...something over 50,000 have been put in to date.
I'm returning to Uspantan for my second medical mission trip up there. My wife, younger daughter, and I went last summer and my oldest daughter went during both of the preceding two summers. All four of us are going this trip.
Our group of 85 people did 72 major surgeries, saw 1,600 people in medical, vision, and dental clinics, and installed 150 Onil stoves in the huts that the indigenous Mayans live in. My wife's an OB-GYN surgeon, and I am the "MacGuyver" for the trip...keeping things working with duct tape, solder, baling wire, and whatever is needed. We work in an old US-built hospital that's basically sealed up except for the 10 days a year that we are there...so there's a lot of deterioration of systems and infrastructure...even though they do keep it spotlessly clean.
Last year we swapped a refrigeration compressor out of the morgue body cooler for the dead one in the walk-in refrigerator...you might be mildly interested to learn that propane works just fine if no freon is available (no, we didn't LEAVE it charged when we left the hospital). I also stopped the drips in about 2 dozen rotted-out P-traps under sinks by wrapping them with surgical gloves overlayed with electrical tape. Since all of the faucet stems are shot and the water in the sinks basically runs most of the time whenever the pumps are going, that can be a lot of drip.
None of the flourescent lights in the building work except for the ones where we have replaced magnetic ballasts with electronic ballasts...the "local" who oversees the generator (which kicks in whenever the power grid goes down...which is several times a day) was "taught" that the way to conserve funds was to cut back on the rpm's to the point where the generator is still producing the requisite voltage...which, of course, means that it's producing about 40 cycles...way uncool for motors, transformers, and a lot of electrical goodies. The only thing it DOESN'T seem to affect is the tungsten light bulbs, but the surges do those in with great regularity. Needless to say, all of our sensitive medical (and computer) equipment is run from an uninterruptible power supply, although we have had some unfortunate losses over the years.
We actually carted a laparoscopic tower down with us last year and did the first lap surgeries in the whole country...in a rural hospital in the mountains, 70 miles out of Guatemala City (and 7 hours on a paved road).
It's a lot like being out on a boat...without the boat...you do what you have to do with whatever you have available.
This is all done under the umbrella of HELPS International (based in Dallas, TX) who've been doing this for 25 years now...
go to http://helpsinternational.org for more info on some of what we do. The stove project is particularly interesting...something over 50,000 have been put in to date.