Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Friday Hospital Visit

Friday started off the weekend well. We had our first field visit to Mt. Meru hospital in Arusha. We spent the morning fixing their broken medical equipment and then had the afternoon off to explore Arusha.

Daria, me, Keerthighaan, and Laura wearing our scrubs!

I worked on fixing an oxygen concentrator with Raelyn.  When we opened it up, everything looked functional so we checked the electrical connections, cleaned it up, and then decided to test it out to make sure it was spitting out concentrated oxygen instead of just normal air.  The only way to accurately test it is to use an oxygen concentrator meter, but most hospitals don't have those.  Therefore, Dr. Malkin's lab came up with a method to test it.  If you light a candle and blow out the flame, the concentrated oxygen should relight the candle.  If the candle does not relight, the the oxygen coming out of the machine is not concentrated enough.  However, we did not have any candles, so we lit the corner of a big piece of cardboard and held it up to the output nozzle.  The conclusion was that the machine did work well!  However, in the process, not only did the cardboard relight, but also the nozzle caught on fire because the cardboard was too close.  Luckily we had a bucket of water close by and were able to put it out before any real damage occurred, but the nozzle still melted (it was plastic).  However, later in the day, we found another oxygen concentrator that was broken beyond repair so we were able to harvest the nozzle and put it onto the other machine.  Successful ending!  We also completely fixed two wheelchairs and another group rewired an OR lamp.

The inside of an oxygen concentrator

We spent the rest of the afternoon browsing the markets in Arusha and locating the hardware stores.  Then we headed home where the tailor came by with our finished skirts and we headed to bed early because we had to get up early the next morning to start our safari.

I will post safari photos and stories in the next couple of days!

No comments:

Post a Comment