This trip we were so excited to welcome Dr Fletcher Starnes and his surgical team from Global Healing Hands. This team focuses on complicated goiter surgeries which are common in our patient population. We met Dr Starnes while we both were on a volunteer trip to Cambodia in January of 2022, then we joined Dr Starnes and his team in Rwanda later that year. Dr Starnes has been operating in Rwanda for many years and we were so happy to travel with him and help with a new patient population. This is the first time that we have welcomed a second surgeon to Kinondo Kwetu so it was definitely a learning experience. Goiter surgeries are very specialized, so it is important to have a surgeon trained for that. During his time, Dr Starnes was able to perform eleven goiter surgeries! He enjoyed working with our team and the team from Kinondo Kwetu so much that he is hoping to make an annual trip to help with our goiter population.
We were able to visit the Kinondo Kwetu Primary School and bring our collected donations. As promised we brought soccer balls for the kids to play with, we also brought new jump ropes which were a very welcome surprise. During the end of the school year many friends and family donated both new and used supplies to the school. We used some donated funds to purchase new large pencil sharpeners to go on each teacher’s desk so that students always have access to one during school time. We brought 500 toothbrushes again to continue supporting the school’s dental hygiene project. We also had a local printing company donate office supplies for the school and the hospital. It was so incredible to see all the smiling faces from both students and teachers alike as we showed them what we had brought. Our next goal is to help fundraise in order to provide students with new uniforms. That is one of the only costs that parents have for their children, but for many this is still a high price to pay. Many children wear old, torn, or poorly sized hand me down uniforms in order to attend school.
After our record breaking surgical numbers last trip, we decided to dedicate some money to purchase a second and newer autoclave, a machine for sterilizing surgical instruments, for the hospital. The autoclave that the hospital had was small and outdated, and since as a team we are becoming more efficient we were working faster than the autoclave could clean our instruments. We were very happy to see the new machinery and test its limits, and we sure did this time!
We broke a new record for our team, safely completing 119 procedures in eight days of surgery. This trip provided some very complicated cases, one patient had a total of five procedures that needed to be corrected at one time. The patient tolerated the complicated surgery well and went home the following day with minimal pain, following up the week after we happily heard the patient had no complications from his surgery. It was an amazing trip, having a new surgical team was exciting and hopefully a sign of more collaboration in the future in order to meet the needs of the patient population of Kwale County and beyond.