Make do and mend!
One of the biggest challenges facing the countries where Sightsavers works is the lack of medical equipment. However healthcare workers often find ingenious ways around the problems that face them.
Slit lamps are essential to provide most eye care services. However, in the dry, hot, dusty conditions in Senegal, the high-wattage bulbs which are required to use these vital pieces of equipment often fail.
In remote towns and villages calling for a replacement is simply not an option so Fatou Seine Ngom and Mamadou Fayé, the two surgeons using the equipment, were forced to use their imagination and ingenuity to solve the problem.
When we do not have the things we need, we always find another way!
Fatou found a reading lamp on a market stall and uses it to shine into patients’ eyes, providing just enough light for her to see the surface and interior of the eye. Fayé was more creative, buying a car head lamp bulb, the only type which could provide the necessary light whilst being small enough to fit inside the lamp, and having it welded to the plate which holds the bulb in place inside the lamp.
“Here things are not so easy sometimes,” Fayé says, “but we are used to this. When we do not have the things we need, we always find another way!”
What do you think?