The first arrivals

This is Open Heart International’s (OHI) second mission to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania this year. We will be working at the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute, which is in the grounds of the Muhumbili National Hospital.

The OHI team consists of surgeons, anaestetists, prefusionists, theatre nurses, intensivists, intensive care nurses, ward nurses, a cardiologist, a sonographter, a biomedical engineer, a physiotherapist, a procurement manager, a coordinator and a media liason, totaling 34 persons. On this trip there are two cardiac teams, an adult team and a paediatric team.

The surgeries are scheduled to start on Saturday, so for now the part of the OHI team that has arrived in Dar Es Salaam is working to prepare everything so that when the full team is here on Friday, everything is ready to start surgeries on Saturday.

The screening team (cardiologist and sonographer) has been working hard since Monday checking out a relatively large amount of patients, many of whom will be operated in the course of our stay. Some other team members arrived on Tuesday afternoon from Australia, and today was a first day for us to visit the hospital and meet some of our tanzanian counterparts. After the visit to the hospital, there was some time to visit a bit of Dar es Salaam in the afternoon – while still adjusting to jet-lag!