Clinic Equipment

CLINIC EQUIPMENT

In order to bring the Mbita community the highest quality of health care while still remaining culturally appropriate to the area, we require use of certain technologies that are not seen in Mbita today. We hope to continue to expand the care we can provide through purchasing medical equipment to meet the needs of our patients.

Solar Refrigerator – Complete!

At the end of 2010, MED25 was able to purchase a solar refrigerator thanks to a foundation from Seattle, Washington. This foundation has been a vital support to our efforts in Mbita, and we are so thankful for their continued support. Prior to purchasing the solar refrigerator, a MED25 Clinic staff member had to travel 30 minutes into town each morning to pick up immunizations from the local hospital. These immunizations would come in a ice chest and had to be returned by the end of the working day. This would take approximately 2 hours and $4 US dollars every time it was done, which limited our ability to provide immunizations to 1-2 days per week. With this new solar refrigerator and back-up generator, we are able to provide immunizations to our patients 6 days a week, every day that our clinic is open. We are able to ensure that all children who come to our clinic are able to receive appropriate immunizations, instead of requesting them to return on our next immunization day (which unfortunately does not usually happen). This has taken us one large step closer to ensuring that all children are immunized against preventable diseases.

Solar Panel – Complete!

We currently do not have access to electricity due to our remote location. The clinic building is designed in a way that provides us with as much natural light as possible, but unfortunately that is not always enough. In order to provide quality health care to this community, we need to have access to electricity to use our electric microscope when enough daylight is not available, for examination lights, to charge the clinic emergency phone, and for laptop computers used for data collection. Part of the grant from the foundation noted above was used to purchase our first solar panel to be used separately from our Solar Refrigerator. This brings light to our clinic in a whole new way!

Microscope – Complete!

In the spring of 2010, Sehome High School from Bellingham, Washington donated two reflecting mirror microscopes to MED25 International for use in our new clinic. These microscopes were incredibly useful to the care we were able to provide to the community. As we continued to grow as a clinic, we realized that in order to provide certain tests the patients of this community needed, we required a more complex microscope that could operate by light as well as electric power. After purchasing the solar panel, we were also able to upgrade one of our microscopes. Thanks to several smaller donations received throughout 2010, we were able to purchase a duo microscope that can use both natural light and electricity while also providing a higher objective in order to more accurately detect the malaria parasite.