Thursday, January 5, 2017

Global Health (Vietnam) - Day 4

In the morning, our team met in the hotel lobby to discuss the plan for the day before walking a few blocks to MTTS. At MTTS, we launched into a design review of the Otter Warmer concept with Greg, Steffen and Chloe Nguyen, an MTTS Fellow. Our discussion began with a double-layer plastic bassinet, and ended with a single-layer bassinet. Their ideas of ways to reduce cost and materials cut the cost of materials by nearly 1/3!


We examined the single layer
bassinet prototype during our meeting

After a quick lunch and another dose of thick, creamy, local coffee, most of the team
went to the tertiary (national) hospital, National Obstetrics Hospital, also called C-hospital (because they do a lot of C-sections) near the city center. A second smaller team worked with MTTS to discuss the bill of materials and brainstorm ways of reducing costs. Our hospital visits and interviews from yesterday gave us more confidence and preparation, enabling us to make the most of our short hospital visit today.

As we walked into the NICU at Hospital C, doctors and nurses stopped writing their notes at the nearest long-table to make room for our hour-long interview. In a small room across hall, we could see at least 20 newborns in cribs, incubators, or phototherapy devices. When looking to the right down the hall, we observed that all of the rooms were packed with babies receiving some sort of treatment or under observation. This hospital takes care of an average of 160 babies per day, not to mention many of these babies had been referred by other hospitals who could not provide the level of care needed. Considering the nurses and doctors were constantly running in and out of the room, we were deeply grateful for the assistant director’s time!



So many babies in many different rooms!



We saw some babies being treated by Firefly!
Co-design session with the doctor!







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