***Sorry for more retroactive Blogging- this took place May 22 ***

One whirlwind day! In just 8 hours Emily and I visited the two largest hospitals in Addis Ababa, got full tours of their facilities, met with the engineers and administrators in their bio-engineering departments, and got a great lunch. The hospitals were incredibly crowded as expected, but surprisingly well equipped. Both had a range of modern imaging equipment, monitors, and seemed relatively well put together all things considered. With that said though, broken medical equipment was still scattered throughout both, bioengineering offices were small, dirty, and lacked sophisticated tools, and patients were everywhere.
Being here this week has shown how systemic a lot of the issues at these hospitals are. Administrators often can’t dispose of old decrepit equipment due to bureaucratic red tape, technicians have their hands tied by lack of tools, and no one can accomplish anything quickly because you can’t remove a device from it’s ward without a full set of signatures. Inventory is a good first step, but only that. Real change and improvement will have to come more slowly as inter-departmental trust builds, organized policies replace the status quo, and people realize that you can do more if you can actually walk in your storage closets and trust your backup equipment.