Travel arrangements for Ghana
From March 24th Birgit Meyers-Carow, Daniel Gerlach and Thomas Erkert will travel to Ghana for 2 weeks.
The main task for the 3 members of the association will be to accompany the project 1Bed4All (II). Birgit will travel with Daniel and Thomas to Sunyani during the first week to finish her master thesis.
In this project, the supply of several hundred hospital beds is intended to counteract the shortage of beds in Ghanaian hospitals and health posts. Together with the Catholic University College of Ghana, Fiapre, Sunyani, Ghana, West Africa, HITA e.V. and the St. Vincenz Kliniken in Paderborn, 180 hospital beds were shipped to Ghana in a first step. These will be distributed to various recipients over the next few weeks.
In terms of empowerment, however, it is of central importance that the beds are not only delivered but also introduced into hospital operations on a sustainable basis using a special concept. This concept is based on modern media and guarantees the proper and long-term use of these beds. To ensure this, Daniel Gerlach and Thomas Erkert will train representatives of the 18 selected institutions during the first week of their stay.
The main focus of these trainings will be the intended use of these hospital beds. Nursing beds are medical devices and must be marked with a "CE mark" in Europe; electrically operated nursing beds are even active medical devices. Maintenance and repair must be carried out in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions and the Medical Devices Operator Ordinance to ensure that care beds are used as intended.
The prerequisite for handling these beds, in addition to regular inspections, the already mentioned maintenance and servicing, is detailed instruction before starting work. These instructions form the central task of the two members of the association. Another issue will be the optimal placement of the beds, which must be discussed or worked out with the representatives of the selected hospitals. For example, the nursing beds in the hospital room must always be accessible from both long sides and, if necessary, also from the head and foot ends.
For a sustainable handling of the donated care beds, a detailed and at least annually repeated instruction of all users is necessary. With our trainings, we therefore also want to ensure that the execution of these briefings is documented. For this purpose, tools must be developed that are made freely available to all users.
For the implementation we have a cooperation with Inno Space (
www.inno-space.hs-mannheim.de
) of the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences (
www.hs-mannheim.de
) closed. During the summer semester, a group of students* will develop such a tool. In order to give the students a better insight into the special needs of the small and medium hospitals we have selected in rural Africa, we plan to conduct a video conference during the stay. You will learn more about this at this point (
www.hita-ev.org
).
Please continue to support this project with your donations (
https://hita-ev.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/EU-Ueberweisung-HITA-generell.pdf
). We are still looking for sponsors who would like to cooperate with us, e.g. to be able to send more hospital beds to Ghana or to set up additional PC labs.
In the second week of the stay in Ghana, Daniel and Thomas will visit already existing projects, to which only limited contact has been possible for almost 3 years due to the Corona pandemic. To do this, they will be traveling in both the Brong Afoa and Western Regions, and will travel to the Volta Region beginning April 2. There we will send donations from members and supporters to our partner schools, the Mawuko Senior Girls High School (
https://hita-ev.org/project/schulpartnerschaft-mawuko-cms/
) and the Springs Preparatory School (
https://hita-ev.org/project/schulpartnerschaft-springs-hita/
) handed over. In addition, we will use the HITA-PC Labs set up there (
https://hita-ev.org/projekte/hita-pc-labore/
) to perform maintenance or upgrade the labs if necessary.
Therefore, we will gladly accept donations in kind, especially in the form of used cell phones, computers, notebooks, monitors, tablets, printers, etc., until the departure on March 24. Please contact us at
info@hita-ev.org
. Every device counts and helps. The picture above shows the donations in kind collected so far.
If you would like to follow our Easter journey or are interested in our projects, please visit our website regularly (
https://hita-ev.org/
). On these pages we will continuously keep you up to date with the latest activities of the association.