Sustainable Progress

I have long believed that a powerful marker of a successful teacher is to make themselves redundant. Today, I have achieved such. The local team undertook two mesh hernia repairs completely independently, with me sitting and doing some admin in the surgeons’ room. I popped my head into theatre from time to time and what I saw was so very pleasing. It may have taken a long time (the first one took 2 hours!), but the quality of operating was extremely high and the end technical results excellent. I feel incredibly proud. It is such a pleasure to see them confidently using the diathermy, progressing through the various steps of the procedure correctly, handling the tissues with increased care and confidence and working well together. I am also certain that speed will come with time. By taking their time now to learn something well (doing is an important part of this), the natural progression is for the pace to quicken as experience and confidence grows.

I could have come to Muheza and operated independently for five months and achieved a fair amount. Instead however, I came to Muheza with the hope of working towards something sustainable. I can now confidently say that I will be leaving behind a viable mesh hernia service for the future. As a team, they now have the equipment, knowledge and skills to prepare the mesh, perform the surgery to very high standard and also continue to follow up and audit their practice. Excellent. Furthermore, this model is now certainly something that could be shared and applied more widely throughout the region, country and perhaps even the continent. But let’s not get carried away.

For all the challenges we have faced in getting here, arriving is all the sweeter. I am chuffed to bits.

It travelled through Mumbai,

Dubai, Nairobi and 

Dar es Salaam to get to me!

As if to mark the occasion, the shipment that I have been awaiting of further supplies of mesh arrived from India. For that I have to thank the incredible generosity of the Indian Surgeon who has pioneered this technique, what he has achieved is mind-blowing. It is enough mesh to do several hundred, if not several thousand repairs and thus also opens the door for other centres to potentially start using it (we have already made some provisional steps on this journey).

Of course, there is always more to do, and we will spend the next few weeks reinforcing everything that we’ve learned together. But I’m going to enjoy a beer tonight and go to bed a very happy man.