Concept: General Medical Checkup and Perform Dental Procedures and Orthopedic Surgeries
Date: 05/01/2017 – 05/05/2017
Location: Zimba Mission Hospital and Nyawa Rural Clinic
Facilitators: Ms. ChaNelle Baines (Medical Assistant), Ms. Lillian Chen (Medical Assistant), Mrs. Kinna Gandhi and Arun Arya (from USA who did not travel this time).
Physician: Dr. Bharat Bhatt
Surgeons: Dr. Sharad Saraiya and Dr. Mahundo’ona Chowa
Anesthesiologists: Dr. Nitin Shah and Dr. Jennifer Gastelum (UCI Resident)
Dentist: Dr. Mrs. Kokila Bhatt
Sponsors: Anekant Community Center, Tarsadia Foundation, Anonymous
Goals:
The goal for this medical and surgical mission was to provide assistance to people in Nyawa and Zimba. We had done Six previous missions at different places in Zambia. During our mission in 2016, Mr. Sanderson Sianjina of The J zone Youth Africa asked us to around Livingstone area. He arranged for us to be in Zimba and Nyawa. With each mission we learn and grow with our medical and surgical team in hopes of helping more and more patients with general checkups and possible procedures & surgeries.
Attendance:
Our volunteer team had a total of 9 people – two orthopedic surgeons (1 from US & 1 local), one anesthesiologist & one anesthesia senior resident, one dentist, one general physician, two medical assistants and one non-medical volunteer. We partnered with J zone Youth Africa to arrange our work at Zimba Mission Hospital and also at Nyawa Rural Clinic. Local Clinical Officers and Doctors will do the postoperative follow up of all patients.
Results:
We show 235 patients in 5 days. Our patients ranged from 4 weeks old baby to 72 years old. A total of 105 procedures/Surgeries were done. 68 dental procedures, 4 Cesarean Sections and 33 Orthopedic surgeries.
Highlight of the camp happened to be our very first patient – Ms. Zulu (name is changed) is only 4 weeks old and has fracture of right femur. Only option they had was to hang her right leg with a traction for 4 weeks! This would require one adult to be with her 24/7! Our orthopedic surgeon said if we can give her a Hip Spica (Plaster her lower abdomen with right leg) that will make taking care of her lot easier by family provided we can give her general anesthesia, well the anesthesia team was ready for it! Figure 1.
Zambians were very appreciative of our help. Masimo Company based in Irvine very generously donated two Pulse Co-Oximeters that measure O2 saturation, heart rate and also total hemoglobin noninvasively and a EMMA (it measures end-tidal CO2) that is useful to check the correct placement of endotracheal tube (ETT). ETT is required during anesthesia and resuscitation of a collapsed person.
We whole heartedly thank donors and all others who helped us in this yet another medical/surgical mission!