Wednesday August 18

Wednesday: High 39.4 Low 27.3

I had a great day today. Nathan the assistant administrator talked to me a few days ago about a workshop for maintenance persons and Bio-med technicians put on by Med Share. He wondered if I was interested in attending and that he was sending Samuel and that we should take some of our malfunctioning equipment along for the course as it was hands on training being offered. It was originally scheduled for two days but for some reason it was down graded to a one day workshop. I of course said ‘YES’ and so today was the day and at 8:00 am, our driver Richard picked us up and took us across town to Grace Children‘s Hospital, about one hour and twenty minutes away. Our instructor has eighteen years experience in the field and received the Bio-medical Engineer of the Year Award for the state of Georgia last year. It was something else working around him. I’d love to shadow him for a week or two. The group attending the workshop Some of the equipment we took to the seminar Instructor for the Biomed equipment workshop The morning was mostly basic trouble shooting as the twenty plus people in attendance were a mix of Users (Doctors, Nurses, Lab Techs and others) and Technicians (general Maintenance to Bio Tech Engineers). After a sub sandwich lunch, (my first bread since arriving here) we started into an actual project. It was a Binocular Microscope that kept blowing the bulbs. We were able to pin point the problem and although we didn’t fix it, the instructor put someone at Grace in charge of the repair. This instructor travels all over third world countries teaching technicians how to troubleshoot and repair their own equipment. Like he says for the lack of knowledge on how to trouble shoot and diagnose problems, which in many cases are very minor, millions of dollars worth of usable and much needed medical equipment collects dust in some corner. He went beyond isolating a circuit board and tossing it, he went inside the circuit board to the root of the problem. That’s important here and many other places as well because components must be shipped from outside the country at great expense and down time.

An accordian calapse

Some demolished Buildings On the way home from that I got some great shots of some of the extensive damage some buildings suffered during the earthquake. A lot of it has been cleared away or levelled and built upon already so it isn’t as noticeable, but there are still areas in the city where nothing has been done yet. You may find a whole city block where everything is fine and then one building in the middle just crumbled, or a huge strong looking building that has buckled and on either side of it everything is fine. Amazing! The Presidential Palace is one of those buildings that has not been touched, it’s huge dome leaning precariously forward. In the whole area surrounding it the buildings were destroyed and for the most part are cleaned up and gone. It appears to have been the “Capital Hill” of Port au Prince.

Presidential Palace with it's leaning dome