Tauranga Rotary recently (September) assisted with a project in conjunction with Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS), and members of the Rotary Club of Nunawading, Melbourne. This involved dismantling a redundant Heart Catheterisation Laboratory at Tauranga Hospital, and packaging it up to be sent to Lautoka Hospital in Fiji.
Cath Labs are specialised x ray facilities used to examine the heart and blood vessels. They are also used in some medical conditions. These include management of congenital heart defects, stenotic valves, the placement of stents, and the implantation of pacemakers.
The team undertaking the work, under the capable leaderships of Rotarian Pater Koens, included two other Rotarians from Nundawading, two volunteer Electrical Engineers from Phillips, and Tauranga Rotarians.
The equipment was taken apart piece by piece. With some pieces weighing 2.5 tonnes, some carefully handling, and innovative cradling was required as it was removed to a storage facility at the hospital. The smaller items were packed into boxes and clearly labelled. Then came the wiring! Over five kilometres of wiring had to be sorted, and passed up through the narrow ceiling space before being passed down again and packaged up with the appropriate piece of machinery.
This is the eleventh such project undertaken by the RAWCS team, whose mission is “to serve underprivileged people in the developing world by providing them with medical imaging facilities for the diagnosis and treatment of disease”. Tauranga Rotary was privileged to be able to support this project.