Plumbing Africa PA October 2018 | Page 51

HEALTH AND SANITATION 49 at rhythm or mojo was a complete failure. But it got them to laugh and talk about the crazy obruni (white man). TOILET FACILITY A DEEP PIT The village has a three-room school that serves 300 students. The toilet facility for the village is a deep pit with logs that cover the opening. You move one log and squat over the opening. There was minimal screening for privacy around the pit. A future project will include bringing the plumbing vocational students to the village to build a community toilet building. Anidaso Health was able to fund the completion of the additional three classrooms for the school that will be constructed by local bricklayers. The medical village team and the surgical team felt the impact of engineering during this visit. Renee triaged all the villagers before they saw the doctors. This allowed the doctors to see the patients most in need of a visit. Those with minor issues were handled by Renee and the other nurses. While there was an increase to four doctors for the villages, the number of patients they were able to see increased from 800 to more than 1 200 on this trip. Helping with patient load was a new drug dispensing system. The pharmacy was made up of a lady’s shoe organiser labelled with all the drugs. It was now easy to find and dispense them. The organiser could be folded up at the end of the day for transport back to the guest house; a little bit of plumbing ingenuity to help the doctors. The surgical team increased the number of surgeries from 60 to 97 during the two-week period. Two teams of surgeons performed thyroidectomies, lipoma removals, and hernia operations. Help with scheduling and preplanning made it easier for the surgeons. That also meant long nights for the support team in preparing for the next day’s surgeries. During the last two days in Ghana, a meeting with a local mayor was finally arranged; our schedules had conflicted for the first 10 days. The meeting was beneficial in looking towards the future to help his people. We discussed water infrastructure and a sanitary sewer system. The mayor accepted an invitation to visit the United States this summer to experience how similar villages operate in our country. Planning and fundraising have already begun for our next trip to Ghana. Hopefully, I will be able to continue visiting Ghana and providing as much assistance as possible for many trips in the future. If you are interested in seeing more photos of our most recent trip to Ghana, visit the Anidaso Health Facebook page. PA October 2018 Volume 24 I Number 8