St Patrick's Hospital in the town of Maase, in the district of Offinso (25 min from Kumasi). Again, this is the place where we set up what was supposed to be a two-week eye camp, organized by Dr. Gyasi, with the support of the Bawku Presbyterian Hospital and Unite for Sight. Our goal here was to fix as many cases of cataracts and pterygium as possible.
Hospital staff sawing the legs of an operating table to adjust its height. The team of nurses and doctors that set up the eye camp at the St Patrick's Hospital in Offinso had to transport most oftheir equipment (surgical supplies, medication, sterilizing materials, etc.) to the hospital from Bawku (which is at the North-Eastern most tip of Ghana. They had to coordinate in advance to find out what kind of equipment the Offinso hospital already had. Once we arrived though, we had to improvise with or alter what we had to meet the specifications of the eye surgeons. The tin portable on the left is filled with high-tech surgical equipment that is collecting dust. Many of them have been donated to the hospital, but because they are very advanced and need specialists in order to fix them, they have fallen into disrepair. One of the reasons why developing countries continue to use what may be seen as ancient medical techniques is because it those techniques utilize equipment that is, yes, out-dated, but that is often easier to repair and therefore more reliable.
Lily, a nurse at St Patrick's Hospital, and Dr. Gyasi, the ophthalmologist who organized the eye camp. They are examining patients who have received cataract and pterygium surgeries the day before. You cannot tell by the picture, but the hallway they are standing in was very hot, despite the wall of bricks on the right that had some holes. Everyday, we would see patients sitting on the benches, lining the entire length of the hallway, waiting to be seen by the doctors.
Here, Dr. Gyasi and George, the ophthalmic nurse from the Offinso Hospital, are examining a patient. Patients are screened in this consultation room, and either prescribed medicine or referred for surgery in the surgical theatre.
Here, Dan, one of the nurses from Bawku, is preparing a patient to enter the surgical theatre. First, he needs to anesthetize the patient by inserting a needle into the eye orbital of the skull, and then he uses a ball and an elastic cloth to apply pressure on the eye. This makes the eye soft and easier to operate on.
Hospital staff sawing the legs of an operating table to adjust its height. The team of nurses and doctors that set up the eye camp at the St Patrick's Hospital in Offinso had to transport most oftheir equipment (surgical supplies, medication, sterilizing materials, etc.) to the hospital from Bawku (which is at the North-Eastern most tip of Ghana. They had to coordinate in advance to find out what kind of equipment the Offinso hospital already had. Once we arrived though, we had to improvise with or alter what we had to meet the specifications of the eye surgeons. The tin portable on the left is filled with high-tech surgical equipment that is collecting dust. Many of them have been donated to the hospital, but because they are very advanced and need specialists in order to fix them, they have fallen into disrepair. One of the reasons why developing countries continue to use what may be seen as ancient medical techniques is because it those techniques utilize equipment that is, yes, out-dated, but that is often easier to repair and therefore more reliable.
Patients waiting for their visual acuity tests.
Isaac (sitting at the table) recently graduated from University and is doing what they call here in Ghana a "year of service," where they are given a stipend to work somewhere related to the career they wish to pursue. If you have the right connections, you have some measure of choice over your placement. Everyone must do their year of service following graduation. It surprised me how old many of the undergraduates were here. Often students are not able to enter University because they do not have the right connections, did not achieve the necessary grades, or simply do not have enough money to finance their way through public university. Nonetheless, the youth that I have met here are very driven and pragmatic.
Lily, a nurse at St Patrick's Hospital, and Dr. Gyasi, the ophthalmologist who organized the eye camp. They are examining patients who have received cataract and pterygium surgeries the day before. You cannot tell by the picture, but the hallway they are standing in was very hot, despite the wall of bricks on the right that had some holes. Everyday, we would see patients sitting on the benches, lining the entire length of the hallway, waiting to be seen by the doctors.
Here, Dr. Gyasi and George, the ophthalmic nurse from the Offinso Hospital, are examining a patient. Patients are screened in this consultation room, and either prescribed medicine or referred for surgery in the surgical theatre.
Here, Dan, one of the nurses from Bawku, is preparing a patient to enter the surgical theatre. First, he needs to anesthetize the patient by inserting a needle into the eye orbital of the skull, and then he uses a ball and an elastic cloth to apply pressure on the eye. This makes the eye soft and easier to operate on.
Dr. Gyasi (left-most) and Mr. Baba (right-most), with nurses Diana, Dennis, Gladys, and Theresa, and four patients undergoing surgery. While the doctors were operating on one patient, the nurses would be busy off-loading and preparing the patients for surgery. Mr. Baba is not a doctor, but he is a nurse that underwent training to learn how to perform cataract surgeries. The training of nurses to perform surgeries is one of the ways that organizations like the World Health Organization hope to push forward initiatives like Vision 2020, which hopes to eradicate eye diseases like trachoma, river blindness, etc. by the year 2020. Many ophthalmologist associations are against upgrading nurses because they refuse to believe that it will destroy the profession, and that nurses would never be able to do the same quality of surgeries as ophthalmologists. Despite these beliefs, nurses like Mr. Baba have had a tremendous impact on helping to achieve global health goals in eye health. For example, Mr. Baba often trains other ophthalmologists, including Crystal Eye Clinic's Dr. Clarke, and regularly participates in eye camps such as the one we held in Offinso. This is amazing considering that there are only 50 ophthalmologists in Ghana, 25 of which are in Accra, the capital, alone.
After the operation is completed, Dennis, the Unite for Sight ophthalmic nurse, puts some antibiotic ointment on the eye and covers it with gauze and tapes a plastic protector to the eye to let the eye heal. The patient is then escorted by the nurse into another room, where their surgical gown and cap are removed, and where they are given some pain killers to take for several days following the surgery. 
Ernest is a nurse at St. Patrick's Hospital who taught me all the Twi I would ever need to know in order to take patient's visual acuity. I became a pro and have been impressing Twi-speaking patients everywhere I've been ever since.
Here he is helping a patient who is heading to the theatre for surgery.
The eye camp team from L to R: Ahmed (driver), Dan (nurse), Diana (nurse), Gladys (ophthalmic nurse), Fred (nurse), me, Dr. Gyasi (ophthalmologist), Ian (volunteer from Vancouver, Canada), Mr. Baba, Joshua (ophthalmic nurse).
An improvised wheelchair at St. Patrick's Hospital. 
Sweet pictures! What are the temps there?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the success rate of these operations by the clinic? What happens if a patient gets complications (if at all) after surgery?
ReplyDelete