Safe Anaesthesia Worldwide

Registered Charity Number: 1148254

Aid to The Gambia

Date Posted: 26 Feb 2013

The Gambia is a small West African country that enjoys warm sunshine for most of the year and has become a popular tourist destination. Despite this, the country is one of the poorest in the world.

In January, SAWW was contacted by a colleague who was visiting hospitals in The Gambia to install and service equipment in operating theatres. He reported that most of the hospitals suffer from a shortage of equipment, medicines, oxygen and unreliable electrical supply.

The Royal Victoria Hospital in Banjul, the capital city, was no exception, and two new ventilators that should have been keeping patients breathing were lying idle for lack of an oxygen supply. SAWW was asked to help and the charity immediately agreed and donated an oxygen concentrator. An oxygen concentrator is a machine that generates oxygen cheaply and effectively from air. Within a matter of days the hospital had received the donate oxygen concentrator and was able to use the two new ventilators.

SAWW also donated three LifeBox pulse oximeters to the hospital at Bansang, which is located deep in the African bush, 200 miles upriver from Banjul. A pulse oximeter is an important monitor that helps to ensure safe anaesthesia and is a key component of the WHO Safe Surgery Checklist.  However, this vital piece of hospital equipment remains worryingly scarce in poor countries.

Health care facilities in the Gambia are sparse and each hospital serves many patients. What few resources they have are severely overstretched. These hospitals urgently need more help and SAWW has the expertise to assist them, but to do so we need funds. This is how you can help.

Donations are needed to provide essential equipment to hospitals in The Gambia, such as:
•    A LifeBox pulse oximeter that will ensure safe surgery costs £160
•    An oxygen concentrator that will provide life-sustaining oxygen costs £1,200
•    A portable anaesthesia machine that will work in remote locations without electricity costs £3,000
•    A full hospital anaesthesia system that is specially designed to cope with the difficult conditions in a low-resource hospital costs £12,500