Hello everyone, its Vincent Mbewe. It has taken me a while to have my first blog. I am a student at the University of Malawi The polytechnic studying Mechanical engineering, and one of the poly interns under the biomedical internship together with other students from Rice University (Houston-USA). Initially, I had interest in doing medicine and surgery but odds pushed to mechanical engineering. I did not realise I would have another chance to do a little of medicine before this internship. Now my interest in medicine has been revived and I love the programme and willing to do more about medical health-care even after the internship.
We (interns) are now in our fourth week of the programme but will still talk about my experience in the past weeks. The first week was basically an introduction to the teams and projects to be focused on. I was happy to meet the Rice interns; Tahir, Theresa, Christine and Leah and also reuniting with my fellow interns from poly; Harvey, Kate and Brighton after some months at our respective industrial attachment placements.
We were introduced to our primary projects; oxygen concentrators and Neonatal Hypothermia. Some of the terms were news to me but with the help of the team I familiarised myself with the projects and was ready to do any requirements that were outlined for me.
Site visits took place in the second week and I was in the team that went to Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe together with Leah, Tahir and Harvey. Whilst at KCH, we did our research on the primary projects and got some information that advanced project ideas. However, we encountered obstacles in the process; for instance being denied access to wards. Nevertheless, in the process of trying to get the admittance into the wards, we managed to boost relationships with some of the people in charge. These relationships will somehow help the progress of the Poly-Rice Biomedical Internship; a blessing in disguise.
The third week was for compiling reports and data finding for assessment to come up different project ideas. I was contented that we were able to come up with project ideas that were presented to the Provost of Rice University. We have now divided into two leading teams in both of the projects. Kate, Tahir, Brighton and Leah form the leading team on Hypothermia and we have Christine, Theresa, Harvey and I as the leading team on Oxygen concentrators.
This week we are trying to come up with the exact solutions of our project ideas and possibly have something that can be appreciated. It’s exciting and we are ready to do more.