Our final research day of the trip brought us an hour south of Nairobi to Machakos Hospital. Machakos is a relatively large rural town, and the hospital itself was large and seemingly very well funded as a public institution.
We met up with Dr. George O'Hara, a general surgeon, and Dr. Mutaba, a second year COSECSA resident. We talked about the hospital, where they explained that they do not do laparoscopic surgery mainly because of the costs associated with it, but they would be open to practicing it if possible, which seems to be the consensus among rural public hospitals. The surgeons would love to practice it if they could, they just need the ability to do so, coming from government funding, access to the necessary equipment, and strong training. Neither doctors seemed to have been trained very much on laparoscopic surgery, but they did recently acquire a training box from COSECSA for their skills lab, so they can train whenever they want.
We ended up splitting up, where two of us shadowed Dr. O'Hara, and the others shadowed Dr. Mutaba as they both performed several small surgeries. We then went to see the hospital's autoclaves to see how they sterilize equipment, since we had never seen that before. They have three autoclaves, although one does not work, and the technician there showed us how they work. They heat up the equipment and cycle air and other gases through them over a time period of a few hours. Basically, it's like an extreme washer/dryer, it was fairly interesting to see.
We got some lunch at the hospital's cafeteria, and then got back on the road to Nairobi. It was a long drive back, as traffic got really bad in the afternoon, so we didn't arrive back until the sun started setting. We decided to spend our last night in Kenya walking outside in the Nairobi streets since we wanted to see what nightlife in the city was like. We walked up and down the main street, and found it to be incredibly lively and bustling. There were many people out on the streets, all kinds of stores open, and even several nightclubs and party buses blasting music. We made sure to stay together and keep to the populated parts of the streets for safety reasons, and we found the experience to be very comfortable. We even entered a club and got drinks.
As we returned to our hotel, it really set in that this would be our final night in Kenya. It felt like we had arrived only yesterday, but ultimately, it had to come to an end eventually. We had spent three incredible weeks here, and tomorrow, that time would come to an end.