August 2021

This is an emergency call from the abdominal surgeon Dr Reiye, one of the Clinical Directors of Ayder University Hospital Mekelle, Tigray, Ethiopia on August 13th, 2021, by satellite communication

Hello, I will ll try to update our current situation. The first will be the Ayder scenario.

A. Hospital-

1. 1.there is severe shortage of medications and medical consumables as we are running out of our stock which was already far less from adequate.
2. CT & MRI are still not functional, and one can imagine how hard it is to treat without them in a tertiary hospital.
3. 3.no dialysis service & 8 patients (2 acute renal failure, 6 chronic) (2acute) died only  in the past 1 month.
4. Too many patients for the hospital to treat, and patients are lying on the floor and in the corridors.
5. Most of the medical interns and residents went back home, so we have severe shortage of medical human resources to cover the increased demand

B. Staffs

No salary for the past 3 months and the banks are still closed, so you can imagine the frustrations.

There is no light, no water and related problems ( almost everything is related with electric power, especially cooking and water supply)

 

I'll come back with the overall regional status

Here you can see what is lost in Ayder Hospital (only full equipped hospital for 6 all Tigray) in pictures:

The up-to-date MRI machine (to repair at least €50,000 for new Helium is required)

The fully functional CT - Machine (to diagnose brain bleeding and more)

 

The dialysis Unit (patients with severe kidney disease die within days without it)