Kisumu, Keyna

In September, we were working at the Yala Sub-District Hospital in Siaya Region, Kenya, the home to Senator, now President elect, Barak Obama's father. This area is proud of their native Grandson, as they should be.

While working there we met a young abandoned boy, also named Senata Obama (they do not pronounce the r), named by the hospital staff that care for him. He is about 2 and a half years old and sleeps in the children's ward at night and hangs out near the kitchen during the day where he is able to get food from the cooks.

While we worked, he watched us and played around the job site. Levi Culbertson, one of our volunteer workers from Los Angeles had taken a special liking to the young Senator and carried him around a lot.

We are working on getting him adopted, either to my own family or to Levi's here in the U.S., but process is extremely difficult. It looks like he will actually get adopted by Joseph and Agnes Twoli who run the Aid Orphan Education Trust, organization in Kenya. While they work with orphan children, they will actually adopt him to be there own son.

Joseph and Agnes lost a boy in child birth about 6 month ago, so they have a hole in their heart and family made just for this young boy. We at Assist International will be following up to make sure the process doesn't stall due to a lack of funds and that Senator Obama has a great future.

How can he go wrong with a name sake that has set bar so high?

Tim

China: The Ceremony

May 15th

By Ray Schmidt

Ceremonies are a big part of Chinese culture. The ceremony for the CCU project proved this in spades. According to the program, the ceremony activities would begin at 8:48 AM and be completed at 10:28 AM. The number eight is very significant—I think it symbolizes success or good fortune or something.

So the ceremony began right at 8:48 AM in the large community square in the center of Taojiang. It’s difficult to describe the scene. There were banners, arches, flowers, music (including Elvis), VIPs and crowds of people. It really was a grand affair as far as ceremonies go. Everyone was very appreciative of the equipment that was donated and installed, as well as the training that was provided.

Following the ceremony in the center of town, people were transported to the hospital to view the equipment. This is always a fun part of the program. The doctors and nurses at the hospital share the details of the equipment with the VIPs, the press and all the other visitors. You can see a real sense of pride—this is their equipment and it is the finest equipment around.

For all the success of the project, the devastating earthquake is what sticks in my mind. As I’m writing this the death toll is over 25,000 and the hardest hit region is just now being reached by rescue workers. Dr. Zheng was able to get on a flight to Chengdu this evening and will soon be with her husband and parents. I don’t know how she made it through the past several days, but she did and her efforts will long be appreciated by us and the hospital staff.

China: Installation

May 14th,

By Ray Schmidt

The earthquake in China has now claimed over 12,000 lives. It’s an odd feeling to be here in Taojiang, 600 miles away from the epicenter of the quake, and it’s as if nothing catastrophic has happened. The streets are crowded, the hospital is a hive of activity, and we are continuing with our installation. Qing was finally able to contact her husband in Chengdu and he is alright. None of her family or friends was hurt by the earthquake.

Today we wrapped up the installation. We converted all the monitors to the Chinese language, tested them, and connected patients to the equipment. The new ultrasound was immediately put to use on twenty patients yesterday. The installation has gone very smoothly.

A group of Rotarians from California arrived today and visited the hospital. They represent Rotary District 5170, which encompasses a large part of the Bay Area. Rotary Clubs from that district sponsored this project and we were glad to show them what their support has brought about. The Taojiang County Hospital is one of the smaller hospitals in the region and there were some questions about why this particular hospital had been selected. One reason was that the hospital had a real need. It was a neglected hospital, largely ignored by the Ministry of Health, and it needed the medical equipment we could provide. The hospital also serves a large population of poor individuals. This particular region of China is isolated from the economic boom occurring in other parts of the country. The hospital also has a strong group of doctors and nurses that would be able to utilize the medical equipment. All these factors played a role in deciding to help this particular hospital.

Armin (pictured) has made a real effort to learn as much Chinese as possible. It’s an incredibly difficult language, but he’s been working at it everyday. His attempts at the language have been a good source of humor for the locals, who burst into laughter whenever he tries a new word or phrase, but then they quickly come to his aid and encourage him.

China: Earthquake

Monday, May 12th
By Ray Schmidt

I didn’t feel the earthquake, nor did Armin or Qing. Several people at the hospital felt a shaking but nothing major. Back at the hotel, Bob and Charlene Pagett, felt the earthquake in their seventh floor room and quickly went downstairs and left the building along with the rest of the hotel’s guests.

Qing was particularly worried since her family lives in Chengdu, which is about 60 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake. She tried for hours to reach her parents and her husband. At dinner she was able to reach her mom and then her father who are both safe, but I haven’t heard if she’s been able to reach her husband.

The earthquake is about 600+ miles northwest of Taojiang.

Taojiang, China

Sunday, May 11th
By Ray Schmidt

I arrived last night in Taojiang, China along with the rest of the AI team. Taojiang is a city of 830,000 residents located in the Hunan Province. This morning we began working at the Taojiang County Hospital. We are installing a 6-bed patient monitoring system with central station in the hospital’s Cardiac Care Unit (CCU), a 6-bed step down monitoring system, and an ultrasound.

The first action item for the day was meeting with the China Customs officials to go over the donated equipment. The customs officials agreed to not inspect the contents of the shipment until we arrived to unpack the items. We’ve had problems in the past where our shipments our inspected at the airport and we lose one or two pieces somewhere between the airport and the hospital. Not only did the customs officials agree to do their inspection at the hospital with the medical team present, they agreed to do it on a Sunday. This was very kind of them and enabled us to begin work right away.

The lead engineer on the project is Armin Sohrabil from Union City, California. He is a field service engineer for GE Healthcare and this is his second trip with Assist International. Armin is a great worker who adapts well to whatever situation we encounter at the hospital. He also relates well with the local hospital personnel and the rest of the team.

Our trainer is Dr. Qing Zhang (pictured above, left), a cardiologist from Hong Kong. In 1999 Assist International installed a patient monitoring system at her hospital in Chengdu, China. She learned the equipment quickly and by the end of the week she was training others in the hospital. Several years later we asked her to be our lead trainer for a project in Ili Kazak in western China. Naturally, we thought of her again for this project.

The project is being sponsored by the Santa Cruz Rotary Club, Rotary District 5170 and Rotary International.

The installation phase went very quickly since we had six workers from the hospital helping to mount the monitor brackets and string cable. There was also very little activity in the hospital because it was Sunday and we were able to work very quickly. By the end of the afternoon we had finished all the cabling and mounting the monitors.

Chile: One Last Item

We returned to the Dr. Lautaro Navarro hospital (pictured) late Saturday night after two days of relaxing in the mountains of Patagonia. The power supply for the central station came in and so we went down to install it and get the second central station up and running. It took only a few minutes to install the power supply and another few minutes to configure the central station. This now gave the hospital two central stations that would enable them to expand in the future.

And so ends another medical project. This was a great project. The hospital was wonderful. Our hosts, the Punta Arenas Rotary Club, treated us so well. The doctors and nurses were exceptional. There is no doubt in my mind that this equipment will serve the hospital well for many years. Not so much because of the equipment, but because the hospital personnel are truly outstanding and will be able to fully utilize these monitors for many years to come.

I have to add one more note on this project to Chile. Our bus driver, Sergio, was terrific. He would pick us up at any time during the day or night and deliver us to wherever we needed to go. Even last night when we called him to pick us up from the bus station (we were returning from our trip to the mountains), and take part of the group to the hotel and then some of us to the hospital. So at 9:30 PM he met us, and his daughter, Joseline, was with him. We met her several times before, but yesterday was a special day for her. It was her 13th birthday and when we found out we sang 'Happy Birthday' and that made her laugh. I can’t fault her for that—it was pretty bad.

So this morning, Sergio and Joseline met us at the hotel for our drive to the airport. Sergio shook each of our hands and seemed very emotional. After we got on the bus he presented the team with a gift—a large wood carved penguin. It is the first time that I have ever received a gift from our driver. It was quite humbling.

Chile: Show and Tell

When we first walked into the unit on Saturday, I was a little surprised to see the condition of the unit. The walls were dirty, the paint was peeling and the floors were a mess. But today when we walked into the CCU it had undergone a transformation. The hospital workers had been up most of the night painting the walls, bringing in beds and putting new sheets and pillows on them. It was beautiful.

We spent a few more hours training and then helped get the CCU ready for the opening ceremonies. At 3 PM the CCU was opened and it seemed that most people were pleased with the results. In particular, Dr. Berr, a Professor of Cardiology at the University of Chile Teaching Hospital in Santiago, who began the heart program in Punta Arenas, was impressed with the equipment that had been donated and installed. He began a cardiac program at Punta Arenas 15 years ago when everyone told him that it was impossible. Against all odds, he recently performed the first open heart surgery in Punta Arenas. I had the opportunity to speak with him at length and he kept saying that we don’t realize what kind of impact this CCU will have on the whole region. Rob Busby, our lead engineer, showed him all the features of the monitors and the central station. He was especially excited about the telemetry monitoring system, which he did not know was being installed. His comments made the whole team feel great about what we had done.

After a few newspaper and television interviews, we were done—well, almost. We still had one midnight dinner to get through, which turned out to be a wonderful time.