National Global Handwashing Day

Today we worked at another Hospital.  It's an older facility made of multiple buildings.  The main building that houses intensive care, the surgical suites, the laboratories and the stroke unit is about 10 years old.  The other buildings were likely built while the French were still here.  There is a new, multistory hospital being built next door that will replace the current hospital complex.  It is still a year or so away from completion, I think.  One interesting connection with that new hospital is that when the administration was first deciding to build the new building they sent a team of architects and physicians to look at other hospitals in other countries.  Lewis got tapped to help connect that team with the University of Utah and they spent a number of days in Salt Lake City getting a full blown tour of the facilities there.

With the surgery suites in a different building that means that every time we go there, as we enter the main doors of the hospital or wait for the elevator we are sure to encounter unconscious patients, wrapped in sheets, lying on guerneys and being pushed through the front lobby and out the front door and around the building  and into another to get them back to their hospital rooms after surgery.

The staff I talked to are looking forward to patients not having to be moved outside on their way back to their hospital rooms.  And of course, during the rainy season it means delays.  There is a strict "no unconscious patients out in the rain" policy.

Also, we discovered that, unbeknownst to us, October 15 is Global Handwashing Day.  To commemorate it (and also review the principles with all the hospital staff and employees) the hospital is holding a dance and information contest.  Every department has been required to create a dance team with original choreography on the subject  of handwashing and appoint two members of the team (one doctor and one support personnel) to represent them  in a short public interview testing their knowledge of handwashing (there is a lot of information about handwashing out there).  My English students invited me to watch one of the first rounds of the competition with them while Lewis was reviewing slides with a couple of serious young pathologists.  It was a lively performance with some creative dances (and, I would assume, some very good responses to questions from the panel, though I could not understand what they were saying).

As Lewis said, when you work in a place where there is a lot of sickness and there are encounters with death, it is helpful and healthy to create some positive, recreative energy in the care, study and work being done. And I enjoyed seeing, with some of my young friends  who are also working on their dance routine which they must perform next week, how that truism was being played out here.

We also stopped to see Su May before we headed home.  Her young adult daughter was with her.  Her surgery is tomorrow.