It has taken me time to pop up, but I have blogged anyway. I am a fourth year Mechanical Engineering student from the Malawi Polytechnic. Currently, I’m interning at the Malawi Polytechnic Design Studio with interns from Rice University (Tahir, Leah, Christine and Theresa) and Polytechnic (Brighton, Vincent and Kate). It’s always my pleasure to make new friends. Therefore, this internship has broadened my network of friends. I had a longing for doing something that is health related but was failing to see an entry point. Through this internship I can see my dreams of doing something for the betterment of the humanity especially in the field of medicine coming true. We started this internship on 6th June of 2016. We are working on two Biomedical Engineering projects at the Malawi Polytechnic namely Oxygen concentrators and Neonatal Hypothermia.The first week involved project and individual introductions.
The second week involved site visits in order to do problem exploration surrounding these project ideas. For oxygen concentrator, we wanted to find the common modes of failure and think of how we as students can help in coming up with long term solutions to address these defects. In neonatal hypothermia, we wanted to find how better to combat it at earliest possible stage by designing technologies that can be used to prevent or treat neonatal hypothermia.
Some of the visited sites are Malamulo, Zomba Central, Mulanje Mission and Kamudzu Central Hospitals. I was in the team that went to Kamudzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe. We arrived in Lilongwe on Sunday around 10pm and lodged at college of medicine hostels. We reported for work at KCH on Monday (13/06/2016) and were warmly welcome by PAM officers. The first day involved hospital familiarisation and introduction to different heads of sections /Wards. The next four days involved observations and interviews with different Medical officers and neonates’ mothers/guardians. Our visit was for five days and we returned to Blantyre on Friday (17/06/2016).
In the third week, we were compiling raw data to come up with well- documented data set for future reference. We also prepared presentations to brief the Provost, Marie Lynn Miranda from Rice University about the progress of our project. After presentations on Sunday we went to atmosphere lodge in Blantyre where we had dinner with the Provost. It was awesome!
Numerous to mention are the benefits of this project to me as an individual and the Malawi health sector at large. Apart from the academic benefits, we are sharing different social experiences through which I have learnt some Spanish words like;
¡Buenos días! (Good morning)
¿Cómo estás? (how are you?)
Bien ¿Ytú? (well. And you?)
Bien (well)
Many thanks should go to the organisers of this internship. I’m hoping to share more in the upcoming blogs……………………………………..