REPORT UGANDA Campaign 2019 (16/22 -3-19)
HOLY INNOCENT HEALTH CENTRE, KAMUTUR. Bukedea
Spanish Team, Hernia International.
Team leader: Enrique Navarrete
Team:
Surgeons: Enrique Navarrete, Pilar Concejo, Cristina Gonçalves, Kiko Marsal
Anaesthetist: Mar Felipe, Meritxell Ojer
Nurses: Emma Dueñas, Isabel Rodriguez, Mayte Huertas
Once more we returned to the Holy Innocent Health Centre; After our mission jointly with Surgeons in Action, in December 2017, our Team organizes with Hernia International a week of cooperation in this “Rural -Based Hospital” founded in 2014 by Moses Aisia and located in the rural village of Kamutur, Bukedea Region in Uganda.
On the 2017 trip, we arrived at the centre in the early hours of the morning after a very long journey, so this time we wanted to spend the night in a hotel near Entebbe airport, and start the last 270 km lap on Sunday. However, Moses preferred the group to continue the trip once passport and customs had been cleared.At 2:30 p.m., we started with our well-travelled van to the HIHC and arrived, with no incidents, around 12pm at hospital, similar to the 2017 trip, very late and very tired. We stopped to eat chicken legs and fried bananas.
For my colleagues it was the first visit to the centre, and for me the second visit to Kamutur.The distribution of the group was different from the previous visit, with part of the Team staying in one of the huts and the rest in rooms in one of the pavilions at the centre. On Sunday 16.3.19 a 6. Am the team began the day at sunrise, going to get water at the well in order to have an “African shower” (shower cube). The well is manual and supplies water to the community.
After breakfast, we started the day organizing the operating theatre in the new pavilion that Moses had built, and which was to be the place where we would spend most of the day during that week. Likewise, the four surgeons began the pre-operative visit of more than 50 patients who came to be examined and assessed or surgery. That same Sunday, Moses had decided that we should start, and after lunch we started the task at the operating theatre finishing the day after 8 pm in the evening. Tired and contented we enjoyed the first dinner at the HIHC.
From Sunday March 16 until Friday at 12 o’clock had operated on a total of 80 patients, mostly with inguinal hernias, with more than 110 procedures.
Prior to the work in the operating theatre, two of the surgeons had visited the outpatient clinic and the other two with the help of one of the nurses had visited the patients who had been operated on the day before to evaluate the postoperative procedure and discharge from hospital.Most of the patients stayed the night and left on the day after they were operated; on only tree patients needed more days of admission, for wound care and intravenous medication. A child with a serious recurrent testicle problem and two adults, one with a large ventral hernia and a another that needed amputation of the first toe for an infectious process with osteomyelitis.
On Thursday night, Moses prepared a “surprise party” with music, buffet and could drinks (it was not usual to have could water or beverages the rest of the week), All the collaborators during that week participated in this gathering including the cooks that were in charge of preparing our meals every days and those of the rest of the staff.
On Friday we programmed the operating room until noon and then started our trip to Entebbe, where we had booked a hotel near the International Airport on Friday, to start our return home on Saturday morning. The whole group is very pleased with the work we did at HIHC during that mission. We left a lot of surgical material like sutures, meshes, pain-killers, and antibiotics at the Centre for the future missions to use.
Kiko Marsal
Surgeon