03/29/2023 Travel Report 5, Ghana Trip

The day today was divided into three parts for us! In the morning we had some time to prepare our planned video conference in the afternoon and to take care of our containers in the port. The latter is now simply unbelievable. Despite the efforts of Hartmann International, we still have not managed to get "our" containers out of the port. It is now clear where the difficulties are. Our partners here in Ghana are pulling out all the stops to finally get the green light. Thus, the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service and the Bishops' Conference have now been informed to expedite the process. We are very curious whether we will be able to announce the final completion in the next few days. Our highlight of the day was a video conference lasting over an hour with the students from Mannheim and a film student from Mainz. On the Ghanaian side we welcomed 5 representatives from the Health Centre in Fiabre and 4 representatives from the Catholic University. The first highlight for our Ghanaian guests was that we really started - as planned - at 13:00 "German Time". The astonishment was great when they realized that we were not joking when we pointed out to everyone that we were actually starting at 1:00 PM and not 1:00 PM Ghanaian Time, which includes not only the academic quarter hour 😊. After a brief mutual introduction of everyone involved in the video conference, we got started. The students from Mannheim had prepared questions, which they asked the live attendees directly. On the Ghanaian side, it was noticeable that the employees present checked with the person in charge whether they were allowed to answer in this way. For some of the questions we consulted the experts from the Catholic University, who gave a more general picture of the conditions in the Ghanaian health system. Particularly interesting was an answer to a great question, namely about the most impressive experience during the career path so far. A nurse described an experience in which she tried to help someone who had been seriously injured by a knife. When she realized she could not help him at the facility, due to the lack of a functioning and affordable ambulance, she used her own private car to transport the injured man to the nearest referral hospital. When asked what happened to the patient, she replied that he died there. The situation of ambulance transport is hard to believe from our perspective: there is only one functioning ambulance for the whole district. Most of the transportation is done by bicycle, moped, own car or cab.

Interviews with him and his successor Courage, a trained medical technician, can also be found shortly on our YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1zWW3JrtH5z93YMK3CybSw. It was inspiring to see the enthusiasm and ingenuity with which the technicians try to maintain the equipment and keep it in working order. For example, they showed us donated, electrically adjustable beds from the USA that never worked and are beyond repair. They are looking forward to "our" stable mechanical beds because they are convinced that this is the better solution for the African hospitals. They prefer this solution because robust mechanics - regularly maintained - can be used sustainably.