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November 23, 2009
Report from Jocelyne Lapointe
It was almost impossible to use email from Nigeria as the service was either very slow or off. We were up at 5am and not back at the hotel till 8 or 9pm. Pro-Health took very good care of us, providing 5 armed police at all times (with tear gas grenades). We made new friends at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. The neurosurgeon and nurses built the neurosurgery ward themselves, in an unused portion of the hospital over the last three years. The surgeon, his family , an anesthetist and four nurses came from this hospital to spend the next week with the team at KBTH, to continue their learning. The surgeon got his first day off in 3 years that way, when the team went to Cape Coast last Sunday.
The Americans were wonderful to work with. It was difficult to stop them from starting a case late in the day, they were so gung ho.
However, they did decide that some cases were not safe to operate on, because of the local post-op care available. One little girl from Ghana will be sent to Atlanta to get her surgery; it was too dangerous to do in Accra. This is being arranged by Dr King and Dr Johns (an anesthetist from Johns Hopkins whose brother is the CEO of Emory University in Atlanta).
Brad Ratel did the filming in Nigeria and Melissa in Ghana. Only Brad and Nicole Wu (the Vancouver student from McGill) got ill, probably from food poisoning in Accra. Nicole left on Saturday with all the Americans.
The challenges at KBTH were a bit different. One day, the hospital did not have water, so there was a delay in getting the instruments sterilized, delaying surgeries. The ventilators and microscopes and the C-arm are all operational (thanks to Anders, who was a Godsend) and were in use. A new ICU next to Neurosurgery ORs in now operational also. The hotel in Accra is very comfortable.
Lisa Cain had a very productive 5 days, meeting many people about research projects.
Tonight is the reception at the Canada High Commission with Darren Schemmer. It is Marj's birthday too today. We are spending the rest of the week doing KBNF work though Carrie (the nurse who works with Marj at VGH) went to see last week's patients today.
I will be doing finances today. It turned out that the travelers cheques cannot be cashed in Nigeria and very difficult to do in Ghana. Seth's son-in-law is helping us today in this regard, as a higher up in the Fidelity Bank.
We have lots of photos and film to show on our return.
Lack of time, fatigue and poor internet are the reasons you have not been getting updates on the trip. Emeka has been getting evryone's photos, for future use, in any event.
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Ghana ... Go!!!
