Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

In its fourth year the Link has continued to develop steadily in all areas. This has been possible due to full support from THET, Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust, hard work by the Link Committee Members as well as other staff of Nevill Hall and the Royal Gwent Hospitals and generous support from the local community.

Dilla Hospital

Our Link has continued to support this hospital with essential equipment, instruments, blood bags, laboratory reagents and medical text-books. The hospital seems to have gained back the confidence of the local population. Patients are no longer being referred to other hospitals such as Yirgalem for emergency or routine surgical treatment. The hospital now has adequate water supply and as a result is definitely cleaner than before.

Blood Bank Facilities

In Dilla Hospital nearly eight hundred major surgical operations, over 350 obstetric operations including 80 caesarean sections and forty operations for ruptured uterus were carried out in the last year. No doubt these major operations are possible due to the hard work of the new surgeon and the obstetrician, hospital GP’s, nursing, laboratory and other staff. It is also important to remember that none of these operations would have been carried out without regular blood transfusion facilities which our Link helped to establish three years ago. In the last year Dilla Hospital has been having problems with blood collection bags and reagents. This problem has been addressed by our Link with supply of 100 blood bags and necessary antibody serums. We have committed ourselves to continue to support Dilla Hospital with the necessary blood bags and reagents for the time being so that the transfusion service and as result emergency service in the hospital can continue to function.

Anaesthetic Equipment

In the operating theatre, apart from providing some essential surgical instruments, our Link has provided rebreathing bags for anaesthetic machine which have not been available for some time locally. This has been extremely well appreciated by the theatre staff and we have agreed to provide a necessary supply of these bags in the future. The oxygen concentrators donated by our Link seem to be working all the time and according to the nurses and doctors in the hospital, are definitely saving many lives, as there is still no regular oxygen supply.

Academic Support

During this year apart from providing a number of medical text- books, our Link has been able to arrange further training of the hospital medical staff in paediatrics, resuscitation and medical emergencies. Our Link has agreed to sponsor a visit of an anaesthetic nurse as well as a paediatric nurse from Dilla Hospital for further training in our hospitals for a period of up to six weeks in May/June2005.