First day of surgery

Saturday started off with a tour of the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute for all the new OHI arrivals from Friday who will start working.

After that the OHI teams started doing surgeries together with the local teams. Two paediatric and one adult surgeries were performed. The beginning phase of OHI missions involves the teams getting to know each other and adapting to each other. Theatre and ICU staff from both OHI and the JKCI are exchanging knowledge.

Soon, the ICU patients will start moving to the ward. While that happens, we have had a chance to acquaint ourselves with some of the patients awaiting surgery in the next days – and some of the children are really cute! Yesterday we noticed that they particularly love sunglasses, so today Belinda from OHI brought along some crazy glasses with the Australian flag, and the kids were loving it!

Towards the end of the day, Daniel McLennan the cardiologist in our team had a briefing of the following day’s cases with the surgeons and anaesthetists.