April 5, 2010

written by Gynter Schneider, President of EWH chapter at Aalborg University, Denmark

The first and not last Danish participants on the Summer Institute

After all the great experiences the three Danish students had on their Summer Institutes, they have now started an EWH University Chapter at Aalborg University, Denmark, and new students have been accepted for the 2010 Summer Institute program.

If I had to describe my Summer Institute experience with one sentence it would be: My best summer ever! It all started with a presentation about EWH Duke Summer Institute from Dr. Robert Malkin at Aalborg University in 2008. After hearing about the program three fellow students and I were hooked on participating in the program. We all got accepted into the program, and after spending months on fundraising the three of us had got financial aid enough to participate. We were all very excited to start the on program. Anders was going on the Central American program while Merete and I were going with the African program to Tanzania.

The first month was intense training courses in Swahili and medical instrumentation every day. Every Friday the team took off to the local hospital to repair broken equipment with our supervisors, in order to get a feeling of what was waiting for us the second month. During the first month we lived with host families near the training center in pairs of two. Living with a host family was a really great opportunity to learn about the everyday life in a Tanzanian family and practicing your Swahili. After the first month of training we had gathered a lot of different skills, and were ready for the second month at the host hospitals.

Working at Kibosho Hospital

Kibosho Hospital was located about 7 miles from the nearest city. This might sound like a short distance, but you had to spend 45 minutes in a van and walk 20 minutes to get there. Working at Kibosho Hospital with my partner Justin was a really great experience. Through the month we worked on many different tasks such as inventorying the hospital’s medical equipment, repairing medical equipment, making reusable ECG pads and testing oxygen concentrators. The training month really helped us on our repair tasks at the hospital, and I could use my knowledge from my college classes when repairing and testing reusable ECG pads. I found it really cool that I could use my knowledge from college at the Summer Institute, so I got the feeling that I could use my biomedical engineering skills somewhere else than only at tests and exams.

Before we left the hospital the staff told us that they were very happy about our work and that they understood why we had to leave to get back to college, but when we had graduated we could come back and work at the hospital again. With those final words I really felt appreciated for my effort at the Summer Institute and it was a perfect ending on the program for me!

Adventures and Friendships

The Summer Institute program was packed with training and work, but there was still time for seeing other parts of Tanzania. The group spent most of the weekends together, and had a fantastic time going on safari, climbing Kilimanjaro, visiting Zanzibar and a lot of other cool things. Through the program I got really close to the other participants and made fabulous friends. I hadn’t expected leaving the program with such good friends, but I certainly did, and I missed all the guys a lot when I came back from the program. So to make up for that, I went on my first trip to the US in October to visit the other participants. It was a great trip and it is not the last time I will see them, that’s for sure!

EWH Aalborg University

After the great experience Merete, Anders and I had with the Sumner Institute, we decided to start a EWH Chapter at Aalborg University in October 2009. The main goal for the chapter is to help other fellow students to get on the Summer Institute program to get the same great experience we had. For the Summer Institute 2010 two new students have been accepted, which we are very happy about. More students at the chapter are very interested in participating in future Summer Institutes. Future plans for EWH Aalborg University will be to get medical equipment repairing sessions, which will give the members better repairing skills before joining the EWH Summer Institute.

For more information about EWH Aalborg University visit: ewh.aau.dk and for more information about Health Science and Technology at Aalborg University visit: www.hst.aau.dk.