Interesting things

Well, we recently got done eating dinner where I found out HEAL Africa is going to be the official hospital for US citizens as supported by the embassy in Kinshasa and the consulate office that will be in Goma sometime soon. There is a guy who has been in the Congo for like 13 years in medical missions and the US embassy sent him to assess the various hospitals in Goma and except for the UN hospital which refused to be accepted, HEAL won hands down.

The UN hospital is only for UN staff and soldiers. They have specialists galore and more equipment than they know what to do with. Whenever anyone goes there no patients are there and the people are usually watching cricket (I believe it's staffed mainly by Indians). They sometimes come over to HEAL and do surgeries because they get bored, and now once a week specialists from the UN hospital will be lecturing at HEAL and anyone from hospitals in the surrounding area can come.

That was one interesting piece of news, the other is a doctor in Uganda. He is a graduate from Harvard medical school and while there wrote a paper about doing shunts with lasers. At Harvard he was kind of neglected and the FDA said no. He came to Africa with a laser used to remove tattoo scars or something like that, and has done almost 400 surgeries with it and over 90% successful. I heard this from the same guy checking out the local hospitals and he said he sent a kid there from where he was working at the time and the post operation measures were to make sure the ace bandage around his head was tight and that was it. It's not approved in the US but here it's working great and Joe is excited about maybe doing it at HEAL.

The one major problem with it is the equipment. HEAL would need a laser and an MRI. Well, half of that is solved as because HEAL is now the official hospital of the US Embassy, they will be provided with an MRI machine, or it is more of a priority, or something. The guy just said that problem was being taken care of.