Last Friday we drove to Mutare to meet one of the two 3rd year residents in the country, Joe. He works at Mutare General Hospital and is open to teams coming there to work.It may be an interesting site with specialists. He reinforced the challenge of attrition and mentioned that even supporting fees for the newer residents would help (around $200/year)
On Monday we were scheduled to meet the PMD’s of Matabeleland North and South. Unfortunately Mat North PMD tested positive for Covid so we missed that. Mat south was very supportive and indicated that the Ministry is mandating outreach which they would be interested in partnering with. Gwanda is their new Provincial hospital and a site they would support us working in, as well Plumtree. We are waiting for a list of specific needs.
Tuesday I spent some time setting up the mesh router system for Karanda and doing some dry runs, still working on it last night and this morning we have connection! I have been working with Giz in Uganda for setup.
We also met with the lead orthopaedic surgeon at the new Cure Hospital here (paediatric orthopaedics). They are very keen on partnering, both with the community connection (education rehab outreach) as well as, orthopaedic specialist visits and are open to adding training to their mandate. We go for a visit later today and will give them some of our unused supplies (Povodone, gloves etc).
The Cure hospital was very interesting and may provide a Karanda – like experience in Bulawayo. They are interested in partnering with us particularly around bringing paediatric anaesthetic and orthopaedic skills. This will allow them to expand their training capacity for local surgeons etc. We could help support their trips over (the model we have already) and maybe with accommodation.
We met Ben Cattermoul from DFID who is interested in creatively disrupting the status quo of how aid is distributed in Zim. He was intrigued by the Partnership Pentagram Plus idea and would like to bring some donors to Rasper. We’ll see if that bears fruit.
We have organized to meet the two 3rd year registrars. One in Mutare, the other one in Bulawayo. We also have meetings arranged with the leadership of the NUST program and the Provincial Medical directors of Matabeleland North and South, when we are in Bulawayo.
