Bushenge is a small village town approximately 20min from where Adam and I are staying. The staff there is very friendly too us. Our BMET there is only 24 years old and his name is Mbonyimfura Welcome Ken Prosper, but we just call him Welcome. We started off the week making a game plan for the week. He listed out all the machines he wanted us to work on and when we would do it. As a result we touched every machine he listed -1. Monday we worked on two autoclaves. We had no initial success so we emailed the manufacturers asking questions. With no response on Tuesday we figured out the error on one of the autoclaves which left us empty handed since the "repair" requires ordering a new part from the manufacturer. We also worked on a refrigerator with the same outcome. It needs a new circuit board from the manufacturer. We got a technician to come out on Wednesday for the second autoclave. Same result, it needs a new piece from the manufacturer. Now if we had the time, Im sure we could of fixed one of the machines. However, given that we are only spending a week at this hospital, we moved on hoping to find some simple fixes. Wednesday we also traveled to a health center and installed two incubators. Which was a boost to our moral. The Bushenge hospital had the same incubator that needed to be installed so we went ahead and installed it in 16min (our first one took 3hrs to figure out how to install). We also installed a water purifying system. Towards the end of the day we were looking at their storage unit and saw the infamous Weyer incubators that were broken.
Backstory because I dont think I explained this before. There are around 200 broken Weyer incubators in the country of Rwanda all with the same problem that noone could figure out. Weyer is a German company so our German friend working in a different city called the company and figured out how to fix them. Boom 200 fixed machines.
Once we fixed the incubators they brought 8 pieces of similar equipment to our work station hoping to fix them. Only thing we did was turn on a Billiruben lamp that worked. They thought it was broken so I guess its a technical fix since its back in use now.
Next week we will be back in Gihundwe. Our focus will be working on our secondary project and our needs project. Our secondary project is a project which will benefit the hospital outside of fixing equipment. The needs project is looking for a specific need the hospital has and designing a report explaining why the need is important with our version of a device that would satisfy the need. Wish us luck!
Hopefully I will get photos up soon!
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