Day 2 of Training

Wow, another great day at the hospital. We start each day with hands-on scanning with our main students, Abel Kone (Farakala Clinic) and Alleye Coulibaly (Farmarila Clinic). Youssouff Dembele will be joining us for the hands-on portion for a refresher. The other trainees Drs. Pierre, Luther and Yohanna join us in the afternoon for the lectures. They have received training and scan tres bien. Daniel (Dir of Admin) has also joined the group. We're finding more people expressing interest in joining us and learning about this exciting new technology that they have already seen make a difference in the care of their patients. Our new students are very bright, eager to learn, grasping the concepts quickly and studious. They were outside the scanning room with their French Obstetrical Ultrasound book, before we got there in the morning.

We couldn't do all this without Dr. Dan Nesselroade. His passion for ultrasound is contagious. He does spirited translations for us... boy, we wish our French was better! He continues to expand the use of tools to explain some complex ultrasound principles... i.e., baby doll to show fetal position; he used the baby doll's cap to represent the placenta... and even placed the doll within a napsack to represent cephalic presentation. Too funny. We had some laughs today after he asked Marci (his wife) to bring a French loaf of bread (and knife) to explain how ultrasound takes tomographic images... and what we see is only a slice (get it?)... ahhhmmm... a 2D image from a 3-D object (fetus). This concept is complex, but very important to understand - the mind must process/translate what we're seeing. So there was Dan, slicing the bread in the transverse, sagittal, coronal and even oblique planes to demonstrate what is seen in the 'slice'. Wonderful.

Dr. Dan has been instrumental in setting up this program. At the end of this training, 4 clinics and the hospital will offer ultrasound. This will be followed up with up with 2 more clinics when the solar power is configured. This is something for Mali... and could certainly expand... to other countries and this center could be the Center of Excellence for Africa. And while difficult to prove, it has already had an impact on maternal and fetal mortality. What a blessing!

It's market day in Koutiala tomorrow, so we hope to take that in...