There are two teams in Shisong currently from Belgium. The first team arrived last week. They are sponsored by an organization through their hospital called LUMOS. They have a website, but not an English one (www.LUMOS.org). If you read Dutch you can learn all about them. Over the years they have provided significant support to St. Elizabeth’s. This year’s team consists of an anesthesiologist, a biomedical engineer, 2 physiotherapists, and two nurses. Of course, the work of the team that I was most interested in is that they brought a capnograph for the main OR of the hospital and provided training for it, they provided monitors for the PACU, and Frederic, the engineer, fixed the monitors in the OR that were not working.
The second team is a regular team that performs congenital heart surgery. This team, also from the University Hospital of Leuven, has committed to provide a team to the Cardiac Center each year. This team was here while I was here last year, although only two of the team members are the same. Many of the others, including the surgeon and intensivist, were here two years ago. They have performed cases including repair of Tetrology of Fallot correction of supravalvular pulmonary artery stenosis, and repair of interrupted aortic arch.
Below, you see the newly repaired gas concentration monitor (for measuring the concentrations of inspired and expired anesthetic gases and carbon dioxide), Benson displaying his new nerve stimulator (used for monitoring the activity of muscle relaxants), and the Belgian cardiac team climbing down the rocks at the Shisong waterfall.
The LUMOS team left today along with 2 Belgian midwife students who have been here on clinical rotations since September. The cardiac team leaves tomorrow, so as far as I can tell there will be a complete absence of Belgians in Shisong for a while. There are, however, still Dutch nursing students so there will not be an absence of Dutch spoken here.
Today is the feast of Saint Nicholas, celebrated in Belgium as Sinterklaas. For me, this meant that there were Belgian chocolates wrapped in foil decorated as St. Nicholas.
Check back soon to learn about Mi-Do and their activity in Shisong! (www.Mi-Do.org)
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