Our first four days in Addis consisted of hospital placements, with three days of orthopaedics and one day of emergency.
The highlight was attending a paediatric orthopaedic clinic where the majority of patients were children with club foot. Club foot is a birth defect in which a child’s foot is turned inward, so the sole of the foot faces sideways or upwards. We watched the several infants being treated by having their feet aligned in the right position, and then their whole leg was plastered. The doctors told us that once the plaster is removed after about two months depending on the severity of the deformity, the children have to wear this brace which looks like shoes attached by a metal rod. The brace is worn for two to five years.
We spent three days of placement in the public Black Lion Hospital. The clinics we attended there were in just one big room with several desks. Two doctors carried out two separate consultations at the same desk. We were told the waitlist for orthopaedics at Black Lion was about 400 patients. This was a stark contrast to the Samaritan Surgical Centre, a private hospital, whose facilities are equivalent to private hospitals in Australia.
Our last day of placement was the Emergency Department of Black Lion Hospital. Due to limited resources, doctors often had to improvise. Instead of tourniquets, they used disposable gloves. Instead of plastic bags to collect pathology samples, they used disposable gloves. To mount posters to walls, they used adhesive stickers for ECG pads.
It was a very interesting and eye-opening first few days in Addis. We’d like to thank Black Lion Hospital and Australian Doctors for Africa for organising these placements for Compass students.
