Things are hotting up.

The temperature in the middle of the day is certainly becoming more oppressive. Even the locals complain of the heat. It is 33°C in the shade which BBC weather tells me is a real feel heat of 44°C! Pretty sticky at night too.

Delightful queue of 'taxis' at the

'front door' 

Today I travelled to Korogwe (just under an hour away) to visit another hospital where I had discovered they perform mesh hernia repairs. It was very interesting to visit another district hospital within our region. Whilst quite a large town, the hospital is smaller than that in Muheza. Their head of surgery is a Nun, a medical doctor and a trained specialist surgeon. Another amazing individual. It was such a pleasure to meet her and we happily talked for over an hour about things. She works with one other AMO surgeon on the General Surgical side.

Large numbers of diathermy 

handpieces!

They have been supported for many years by the charity Hernia International. They host about two ‘missions’ a year, each for about two weeks with hundreds of hernias repaired with mesh over the last decade. It was also great to hear that the missions have trained the local staff too. Between missions, they now continue to perform mesh repair (although the numbers are low given the uptake during the missions). Furthermore, with all these hernias repaired, the incidence of emergency presentations with complicated hernias has dropped considerably, a real testament to the project. It is fantastic to hear first-hand about the great work that this charity has done. I was very interested to hear about the finer details as well as take a tour of their hospital. One of the things that struck me the most was the plethora of equipment that they had. Numerous anaesthetic machines, diathermy machines and with loads of pencil handpieces accumulated over the years being left after each mission.

Very similar theatres, but more kit.

I was delighted to discover such a wealth of experience in mesh hernia repair locally. Even better news was that Sister was very keen on the idea of future collaboration both with Muheza and more widely. She was very encouraging about my vision for potentially sharing our experience and expertise more widely and I feel I have discovered a strong ally here. She was interested to hear about what we have been doing and was delighted to hear that we have managed to set up a viable ongoing service. She wants to support this, offering to visit Muheza in the future to work with the AMO surgeons here as required, until such as time as our Specialist Surgeon completes his training and returns at the end of the year. This was music to the ears of our Hospital Superintendent sitting next to me! Furthermore, it was clear that there are several aspects of what we are doing that are of particular interest, and as such she agreed to visit us next week. So on Wednesday I now have two specialist surgeons coming to humble Muheza. Things are certainly hotting up!

After such a rewarding day and on returning to Muheza, we have been treated to dinner at the convent of our lead nurse anesthetist (an unrelated event, although interestingly we learned that all the Nuns mentioned in today’s post know each other and are from the same church!). Up in the hills overlooking Muheza centre, there was a very pleasant breeze making it that little bit cooler. We had a tour of their shamba (farm) including cows, pigs and chicken which are of course universally appealing to children wherever you are in the world (adults too!). We were then treated to a Tanzanian feast which we all devoured. 2nds and 3rds were had by all the children which could not have been better compliments for the cooking. Delicious. The company was also delightful and it was certainly one of the highlights of our time here.

My ladies all sporting their newly made 'African Dresses'