After months of preparation and gathering of material we start for Ulongue on April 27th eager to carry out the Cirujanos en Acción first campaign in Mozambique. All of us gather in Lisboa. The group is made up by four general surgeons: Lucia Catot, Teresa Butrón, Claudia Tinoco and José Manuel Hernández, a pediatric surgeon José Miguel Morán, two anaesthesiologists: Pilar Murga and Ana Gloria Pizarro and a nurse: Mercedes Contreras.
We reach Maputo on April 28th after a 10 hours flight, and we take another flight to Tete. We had to pay overweight as we had 43 Kg extra due to the material we carried. We finally reached Tete, where Dr Bala Mulamba, Sister Soria and Father Paolo were waiting for us and helped us to start for Ulongue. We went in two cars, half of us with Dr Mulamba and the other half with Father Paolo, since Soria had left us in Tete. After a three hour journey, along which we eat fried potatoes and bananas from the local markets along the way, we arrived at the Ulongue Hospital where we met Fr Victor, Genesis (voluntary nurse from Venezuela who came to help us but fell sick with malaria) Miriam, Salomon and Alonso who were also volunteers. We took out our material and put things in order, but we could not see the surgical section as the man in charge was not there. So we just went to see the rural hospital, with very large premises and many beds with sick people with scarcely any supervision.
They took us to the Satewa mission where 20 patients were waiting for us and started singing in a way I will never forget. We took them to the Mission Hall and there we began seeing patients and preparing them for the next day.
The fathers had prepared a splendid and abundant supper for us and then they took us to our individual rooms where nothing was missing and for us they were a real luxury.
On Sunday April 29th we went from the mission to the hospital, about 10 minutes along earthen ways (many of us went just in the place for luggage behind in the van along with patients). We arrived at the chirurgical block, but the man in charge, Reale, was rather reluctant as he needed permission from the directress of the hospital. After a long wait we started cleaning up the operation theaters and organizing tables for surgery. We worked in two rooms, in one of them with two tables and arrangement for O2 where we carried out local interventions and sedations, and the other room was the urgency room where they carried out only caesarians. When they were not using it we carried out the most complicated surgeries with genera anaesthetics, though the respirator was not working so that we had to ventilate by hand and with Propofol C. The hospital has no water as the installation is not working, and so in the morning they brought water in buckets for surgical and instrumental washing, and the light would go off often for a few minutes.
The first day we found it hard to begin, but once we started there were no problems. We operated upon 16 patients both children and adults, even two urgencies, a girl of 15 with peritonitis and a 3 year old child with burns in the thorax, ending our first day at 22.00 without a stop, as Alonso and Miriam brought us some sandwiches which we eat there itself. At night an excellent supper and a Mozambique beer to go to bed with full satisfaction for our work.
Every day went that way, with little cooperation on the part of the staff there, except for Dr Nobre, a hospital surgeon, and Julius as a helper. For two days came also Lady Doctor Jeque as anaesthetiologist and Doctor Bicoco surgeon, both from Tete, who helped us and we learned from one another. There were many shortcomings, the patients were hardly controlled and they were rarely given the medicine we had prescribed, even when we had given it to the doctors already. The hospital did little to get patients, and the installations were very deficient. Even the little material they had was not used by them.
One of our best helps was Alonso, and exceptional voluntary who received the patients, vested and unvested them, gave them medicines and looked after them with great care. Without him we would not have been able to carry out our mission, and even after we came back to Spain he kept us informed about the progress of the patients.
Thus we went on operating on more or fewer patients and carrying our procedures more complicated than what we had anticipated, even the appendectomy of a pastor of the mission and esplenectomisses for gigantic splenic cysts.
On a day with less work we took advantage to go to the Jesuits house. We had never seen such happy children playing with globes or sticking pictures in a book. Their eyes opened wide when we threw them a ball. All this helped us to carry on with our campaign.
One day Fr Paolo (photographer) came to our operation theater and took some spectacular photos of our work. We were very happy with that.
After many experiences and work our campaign ended up on May 3rd with 68 patients operated upon, 85 procedures, and very happy feelings. Finally on Friday May 4th we went back to Tete where we saw part of the city with Paolo, and then on to Maputo where the women slept in the house of the Franciscan Sisters, and the men in that of the Jesuits after a fish dinner.
And now back in Spain and after a few days to reflect on our experience I can say that in Ulongue there is much to be done and many things would improve with new campaigns there, particularly the number of patients and the installations themselves. The best are the two Jesuit fathers Paolo and Victor who are working for health, work and education.
Improvements for future campaigns in Ullongue:
- Patients recruitment.
- Improvement of Installations: Surgical tables, more oxygen containers, space for storage and for recovery after surgery with beds and easy chairs.
- Greater cooperation from the part of the hospital directors and the head of the surgical section.
- Greater supervision in the whole work.- A working respirator, tension manometers, pulsioximeters and electrocardiographic monitorization.
Dra. Ana López Pizarro