Pecs, Hungary

Ray Schmidt - November 4th,


Pecs (Hungary) is a beautiful city. The team and I arrived yesterday after a three hour bus ride from the Budapest airport. The city dates back 2,000 years and the wall that surrounded the old city is still intact in many areas. A cathedral with four large towers dominates the town center and when lit up at night has an other-worldly glow to it.



Our host for this project is the Pecs Rotary Club and they have treated us well. They took us on a tour this morning of the city including a recently opened UNESCO World Heritage site. The city is built upon layer after layer of ruins dating back millennia and we were able to look at some of the old elaborate tombs. The Rotary club president and his English-speaking daughter then hosted us for dinner and we had a very enjoyable 4-hour meal. No such thing as quick bite to eat, but it was a great time.


November 5th,

We began setting up the medical equipment for the Pediatric Hospital of Pecs at 7:30 AM. Yesterday afternoon we toured the hospital to get an idea of what to expect for today. I was impressed with the hospital. It is operated very well and the doctors and nurses are knowledgeable and experienced. One of the hospital's larger problems is that they are understaffed in the neonatal intensive Care unit (NICU). In the USA there is typically a 3:1 ratio of nurse to infants, but if the infant is in very critical condition than the ratio is 2:1 or even 1:1.

Not here.

The ratio at the hospital is 6:1 in the NICU and there are some very severely ill infants. The nurses are constantly going back and forth between babies trying to keep up. The hospital also has a real need for additional medical equipment. Although they have some patient monitors, infant warmers and incubators, it's not nearly enough to handle all the infants in their care. Dr. Adamovich, who is in charge of the NICU, is anxious to get the equipment and installed so he can begin using it on patients. We expect to have patients on the monitors and in the incubators and warmers by tomorrow afternoon.

The team from Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital is doing a great job. The team is made of Sam Downing, CEO of SVMH, and his wife Paula; Brad Carrott, Director of Biomedical Engineering at SVMH; Annette Schuessler, director of ICU; Dr. David Kasting, neonatalogist, and his wife Anna, who is a nurse; Sue Marscellas, Marketing and Public Relations at SVMH; Mike Profuma, healthcare consultant, and his wife Judy. This morning we all jumped in to get the equipment ready. We had 14 patient monitors, 2 warmers, 1 incubator, 1 defibrillator, 4 bassinets, and all the accessories. The training begins tomorrow and we had to have most of the equipment set up for the first training session.

We did have a minor problem--the power cords were not right. They were European cords but they needed a right angle on the part that connected to the monitor. The hospital engineer and I jumped into his car and took off. It was like being in a rally car race. He would weave his way through backstreets and around cars. At a traffic light he would punch the accelerator hard to the floor and his little Peugot would dart down the street only to slam on the brakes at the next light. We ended up going to four stores but we finally found what we needed and then it was an all out race back to the finish line at the hospital. It was as good as any roller coaster ride.


God bless,
Ray Schmidt