Ultrasound device

Salam aleikum, my name is Sheikh Baye Nyang.
I’m medical student at the American International University of The Gambia, and I’m a volunteer at STIN Clinic.

Ultrasound is a diagnostic technique that creates an image of internal body structures in order to find sources of diseases, or to examine pregnancies. Using ultrasound, gives doctors a better idea of a patient’s situation and thus, increases the quality of their diagnostic results.
Ultrasound supported diagnostics direct many patients to our clinic instead of travelling long distances to the clinics of the Serekunda area.

The ultrasound device makes up a large part of our clinic’s reputation, and ensures a huge part of our revenues which finance the girls’ shelter.

As our ultrasound device is running out of service, we currently focus on substitution – and we nearly succeeded.

This is the story behind:

Since sommer 2019 we were trying to raise funds for a new or second hand ultrasound device. But for a non-profit clinic like our’s is hard to convince bankers. Or donors, who tend not to trust in private clinics that much for obvious risks of corruption. Applications to foundations ended without success.

Then, in November 2019, our former volunteering midwife Nene Keita called among her midwives’s networks for help. And her call was answered! A German midwife contacted her willing to donate the ultrasound device you see here at the picture.

In January 2020, Nene drove the entire way of 1.200 kilometres from Berlin (where she lived), to Eschweiler (where the ultrasound was) to Hamburg to put the device on a container.

• 

• 

• 

On 24.th February 2020, the container was finally loaded on a vessel heading for Gambia, due to arrive end of March. But it was only the 15.th April 2020 that we received the news that the vessel anchores at Banjul Port.

Finally, on 21.st April 2020 the ultrasound device arrived in our clinic.

The entire staff of our clinic extends a big THANK YOU to everybody involved in that fundraising campaign! Now we hope to continue our work on the level our patients are used to.