Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

Our link midwifery team of Carole Garrick (3rd visit) and Melrose East (2nd visit) was joined by Robyn Philips, Midwife and Adviser to Welsh assembly as well Jane Herve, Head of Midwifery from Cardiff Trust, Jane Thomas and Lyn, student midwife (all in their 1st visit).

Kyle Jacques, A&E specialist (1st visit), Vishnu Chandrabalan, surgical trainee and computer whiz kid (2nd visit) and I were joined by Paul Clyburn, and Jill Curtis both Anaesthetists (both 1st visit) from Mothers of Africa charity. Nick Skinner from BBC (1st visit) also joined us to make a documentary about the health link.

Due to unforeseen circumstances five members from the Abergavenny and Yirgacheffe community link team had to delay their travel by one day after eleven of us left for Ethiopia on the evening of 26th November. Between eleven of us we had nearly 500 kgs of equipment, instruments, disposable medical items and training material. Somehow we managed to charm our way through the Ethiopian Airlines check in without having to leave anything behind! The oxygen concentrators and the computers with accessories which we had already sent through DHL were collected by the regional health office and stored. Luckily these arrived in Hwassa only few days before our arrival after some delay in clearing from customs.

Objectives

Our link had four main objectives in this visit:

• to run the 3rd workshop for emergency skills training of midwives working in rural health centres and hospitals in SNNPR.
• to run the 9th workshop for emergency skills training in trauma, surgery and obstetrics for graduate health officers (HO) working in the rural health centres (HC) and hospitals in SNNPR as part of their CME
• to support the chosen teaching HCs with essential surgical and obstetrics equipment and instruments. We also hoped to train the HC staff in use of all these equipment and develop an understanding with them as well with the local community for a long term partnership in developing these HC as exemplar institutions.
• to consolidate partnership with Hwassa University College of Health Sciences and the SNNPR Regional Health Bureau.

Mothers of Africa team were exploring possibilities of supporting nurse anaesthetists in local hospitals with training and essential items. They also wanted to take part in our training activities in the workshops and in the HCs.

Abergavenny – Yirgacheffe community link team in their first visit to Yirgacheffe were hoping to meet up key people in the different sections of the community to identify and agree areas of joint partnership.