Thursday, February 05, 2009

Medical supplies to Kenya

This weekend I was on the Isle of Man with TTXGP, the worlds first zero emissions superbike race, which is creating quite a media frenzy!































(photos courtesy of Dave Collister, Photocycles.com, Isle of Man)

I was also on the island to accept another 9!!! boxes of donated medical goods, surplus from the 101 TT Incident Boxes which Marshals have with them in case of emergency. The Motorsport Medical Services, under the watchful eye of Dr. David Stevens, control all medical support for the TT roadracing events; the TT Festival, and will do so for the TTXGP event.

The goods are for the ArrowWeb Hospital, in the Embakasi division around Nairobi which was established to help the community of an estimated 798,000 people plagued by poor health and living conditions. The project to improve the hospital is being ran online using the Netherlands-based NABUUR "virtual village" system where volunteers can simply log in from home to assist. The Kayole-Soweto project involves, specifically for this project, the input of over 60 professional members (including myself) from Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Poland, India, Uganda, Tanzania, Malaysia, South Africa, Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Thailand.

This is becoming a reasonably high profile project since we are soon to be assisted by Stanford University's Ken Banks and his Frontline SMS Rural Health Initiative which utilises the power and reach of mobile internet to aid hospitals to monitor and treat rural patients. With donated laptops & recycled cell phones Ken & josh Nesbit are enablingrural health effective SMS-based communications networks for rural medical operations.

When I first contacted Kenya Airways back in 2008 it was to ask them to transport 2 boxes of medical goods. Fortunately we now have 11 boxes of items such as airway devices, bandages, plasters etc. and they are currently negotiating the logistics while TTXGP has already transported all 11 boxes to their warehouse in London, ready for delivery to Heathrow and Kenya Airways handlers. We're nearly there, Bram!

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