Melody and I are now back “home” to Addis, after a short visit to the town of Debre Berhan. I mentioned Debre Berhan in an earlier post; it’s a very small town north of Addis Ababa. Their local hospital has been working with the AIHA, the organization that is funding our project. Because of this partnership, Debre Berhan is supposed to be one of the best hospitals in the country.

We were only in Debre Berhan for two days, so it wasn’t really possible to see all the ways it had been improved. However, one thing really stood out to us: the biomedical technicians at Debre Berhan have a comprehensive, well organized inventory system in place. This was great for us, because it made our inventory go much more quickly! We could be a lot more efficient when the techs knew where all the equipment was and what was wrong with it.

The head biomedical technician, Solomon, was mainly responsible for the existing inventory. He was extremely eager to help us, and got really excited about the prospect of an electronic database! It will certainly make a lot less paperwork for him. He even invited us to have lunch at his house!

I’m glad we got to go to Debre Berhan because I think it was a more accurate representation of most of Africa; super-urban Addis is definitely not the norm. For example, in Debre Berhan few people speak English, making ordering food a struggle (we tried to order eggs and kept getting French fries because of a mistranslation)!