My name is Gerard Dalziel and my
title here is Volunteer Site Engineer for Connaught Hospital, Freetown Sierra
Leone. I came to volunteer with KSLP through Engineers Without Borders in
February for a six month period. On any give day the duties can range from
repairing a centrifuge to consulting with the Sierra Leone Fire Brigade for a
fire safety assessment of the hospital wards.
The Site Engineer's major
function is to assist in the planning and in preparation of contract documents
to refurbish and or re-purpose portions of the hospital campus for the
post-Ebola rebound of the Freetown health care system. The international
community has realized that the weakness of the health care system was one of
the causes of the severity of this particular epidemic, and is therefore
determined to put the resources here to bring the health care facilities up to
a minimum standard of infectious disease prevention and care (IPC) so that the
system is better prepared for the next epidemic.
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| Planning the stations of the new chest clinic |
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| The medication station shown left as finished |
We are
currently in the process of building a new chest clinic where patients with a
range of illnesses, particularly TB, can access care, along with HIV
counselling as this is a frequent co-morbidity. The building had been abandoned
for some time so was not in a good condition, but we've recently completed it
and it now looks very smart.
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| Before... |
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| and after! |
We
have also just completed a new safer structure to house the hospital oxygen
generation factory, which was previously unusable because the
structure it was in was too small to prevent overheating. We are
also upgrading the oxygen delivery system with portable tanks and oxygen
concentrators to support a CDC trial of a new Ebola vaccine.
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| The previous structure housing the oxygen factory (right) |
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| The completed extension and new oxygen filling system arriving |
Next week we will be putting the construction of a new infections disease (ID)
holding unit out to bid, so that what is now being used as the Ebola holding
centre can go back to its previous purpose. After that we will be
planning a possible campus expansion to add additional ID capacity to the
hospital
Part
of the reality of the work here is the on-going struggle to eradicate Ebola
from Freetown and from Sierra Leone in general. You wash your hands in
chlorinated water every time you enter the hospital grounds in addition to
rinsing them off with alcohol gel several times a day. The Ebola holding
unit is near the front entrance of the hospital and is occupying what used to
be the emergency area of the hospital. Post-Ebola, the old holding centre
will be upgraded to a new Accident and Emergency Department (A & E) with
the addition of new patient treatment capabilities. My work is therefore
linked closely to King's other projects, in this case providing ongoing
mentoring and support for staff on Emergency Medicine, through expert volunteer
medics from the UK.
In
order to plan for the future A & E Department, we had to measure the
dimensions of the existing holding unit. I was able to measure the
outside of the building in partial personal protective equipment (PPE) but
trained medical staff had to take the inside dimensions in full PPE. The
tape used to measure the inside was incinerated with other medical waste as
possibly being contaminated. This is one small example of of how Ebola has
affected how we do our work here.
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| The current ETU which will be changed back into an A&E department soon |
The
volunteer medical staff from Kings Hospital in London and the in-country Sierra
Leonean staff are extraordinarily determined to eradicate Ebola and to come out
of this crisis stronger and better prepared to to meet the future health care
needs of the city. I hope to continue to share in that work by lending my
engineering skills wherever needed.
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| Gerard and Abdul, connaught's Biomedical Mechanic |
