Forging strong collaboration in Jinja
I had a great meeting with Dr Robert Ssekitoleko of Knowledge4Change and Ng'aali group here in Jinja this week. He's a biomedical engineer and head of the Ng'aali group that we commissioned to run the two day oxygen concentrator training workshop in Jinja Regional Referral Hospital, back in August.
Robert managed to fit in seeing me before flying to the US to present his model for strengthening Uganda's biomedical engineering sector. What a busy guy, and full of ideas and knowledge! We are grateful to have found him!
Our collaboration continues and we have made big plans... The next Jinja engineer and end user training course will be this March. This will be a five day course including working on a whole range of biomedical equipment - of course the all important oxygen concentrators but also suction, autoclaves, radiant heaters /infant warmers, oxygen cylinder heads and phototherapy machines. And we are planning to invite engineers from Bugiri, Iganga and Kamuli hospitals too.
The next step now is to get some Equipment Officers designated within the staff of the hospital to maintain things. Nurse Charles was happy to volunteer! Here he is, showing us a cylinder head and humidification pot, having just agreed to be the Equipment Officer for the Children's hospital!
