Blog

“This patient would have died if she was to give birth in Africa”

Imaging the World – What a fantastic idea! This week I had to do a cesarean hysterectomy on a patient with posterior placenta previa and accreta. While operating on her I was thinking that this patient would be dead if she was to give birth in Africa in the middle of nowhere. Your program would help patients like this one. An ultrasound done in pregnancy would diagnose the placenta previa and the patient would be transported to a hospital for the delivery. I can see so many advantages of having ultrasound in the rural areas. I cannot even think about how bad the situation may be in Africa. ~ Flavia Horth

(Flavia Horth, MD, FACOG, is an OBGYN who is moving to Mozambique to offer her service and expertise to improve maternal health care. She will be doing a site assessment for ITW for possible expansion to Mozambique)

ITW Volunteer Ginger Merry, MD. Featured in ACRIVS Spring 2012 Newsletter

The ACRIVS (American College of Radiology International Volunteer Services) has featured one of ITW’s own this month. Ginger Merry is a 2011 recipient of the Goldberg-Reeder Travel Grant; with that funding she was able to travel to Uganda in October 2011 to begin a feasibility and pilot study for a long-term international outreach project that focuses on breast cancer awareness and detection.

Dr. Merry says of her experience, “Developing and working on this project has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career thus far. It has been exciting to see the idea come to fruition and to gain the trust and support of my colleagues in Uganda to move the project forward.”

Dr. Merry is pictured here with Sister Angela Njeri, a nurse/midwife working in partnership with ITW.

To read the entire article from ACRIVS please click: Interlink Spring 2012 Newsletter

Philips First World Conference

Co-founders Dr. Kristen DeStigter and Dr. Brian Garra, along with other members of the ITW team, attended Philips First World Conference near Boston, Massachusetts on April 2nd.

Both Kristen and Brian gave presentation regarding the Imaging the World Model, projects currently underway and some anticipated expansion in the future. This included a demonstration of the ITW trauma protocol (eFAST) presented by Mary Streeter and Chris Duncan.

Both co-founders were also part of panel discussions around the growth of ultrasound in regards global health and current research projects that were presented during the conference.

This was a wonderful opportunity to network with other organizations around the world doing global health projects utilizing ultrasound and to brainstorm possible needs and solutions with the Philips team.

-Mary Streeter

Welcome to ITW’s newest volunteers!

Imaging the World is pleased to welcome the arrival of two new volunteers, Charlize (Charlie) and Jemma Cooter! Born March 21st, proud parents are Andrea Newton, founding Executive Director of Imaging the World, and husband Jeff Cooter. Andrea assures us that the girls will soon be ready to join ITW’s legion of friends and supporters.

Bwindi training

March 19, 2012

“The dream has come true!”

“The dream has come true”, so said James Segawa, Managing Director of Philips Medical Equipment in Kampala, to Dr. Kristen DeStigter. “I remember when you told me about your idea to bring portable ultrasound to remote villages in Uganda, and I was skeptical. And here we are,” he said enthusiastically, as he and his staff unpacked four state-of-the art Philips ultrasound machines sent from Europe as part of a research project between Philips Health Care and Imaging the World. Harriet Nabadda, Customer Support Engineer, will escort the machines on their trek to Bwindi in Western Uganda with the latest ITW volunteer team, bringing the telemedicine, training and technology model to four more clinics in rural Uganda.

-Monica Parikh

“Deliveries are so much easier!”

Well, that’s the opinion of one sonographer initially trained with ITW’s obstetric ultrasound protocols using abdominal landmarks to capture compressed ultrasound images. Not a scientific observation, but a recognition perhaps of the relief a woman feels knowing that her pregnancy is progressing normally, particularly when she knows so many who have died during labor and delivery. Before the introduction of ultrasound in her village clinic, families could not prepare for conditions such as breech birth or twins, circumstances that could lead to death of mother and baby if the delivery were not attended by a skilled healthcare worker.

-Monica Parikh

Nawanyago Health Center Advances to Phase 2

Sister Angela Njeri at Nawanyago Health Center has advanced to “Phase 2″ of the ITW project: she can now perform basic ultrasound interpretations at the clinic with the remote back-up via teleradiology of experts at the district hospital in Kamuli where she refers patients, as well as from the ITW volunteer network.

Sr. Angela was the first ITW nurse midwife trained in the ITW protocols at our pilot site. During phase 1, she learned to use ultrasound to generate scans on pregnant women, learned how to talk to patients and their husbands about ultrasound and appropriate antenatal care, and learned how to handle ultrasound results, getting patients to the appropriate next step. The teleimaging aspect of phase one where images were compressed and sent over a cell phone modem to the internet for interpretation, set the infrastructure for back-up and quality assurance of this model.

To prepare for phase 2, she received an ITW scholarship and underwent an 8 week course at ECUREI (Ernest Cook Ultrasound Research and Education Institute) in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, where she was a stellar student. Phase 2 is important to the sustainability of the ITW model, building capacity at the lower level health facilities, improving low-cost access to care, and creating local ownership of quality health care practices.

This pregnant woman’s scan is showing a breech (foot first) presentation and Sr. Angela is instructing her to return for a follow-up at the health center. Because breech presentations can result in delivery complications, having the ultrasound available for early detection can save the lives of mothers and babies.

Training for March trip to Uganda

A training session was held in Vermont last week in preparation for the trip to Uganda in March. Brian Garra is teaching Dave Guy, a sonographer from Fletcher Allen Health Care/University of Vermont, the obstetrical ITW protocol. Dave will be one of the ITW trainers that will be teaching the nurse mid-wives from Bwindi and Bushyeni how to perform these ultrasound protocols on pregnant women that come to these clinics for antenatal visits, in an effort to improve maternal-fetal health in these rural villages of Uganda. After several training sessions in both Vermont and Maryland all of our volunteer trainers have been trained and are finishing up last minute preparations for the upcoming trip!

–Mary Streeter

Making Things Happen

Second and third year medical students at the University of Vermont are contributing to the development and training of our trauma ultrasound protocol (eFAST). Peter Cooch, Ashley Atiyeh (both seen in this photo) and Amanda Miller took photos for the ITW training poster. These students have also contributed to the research we are conducting in the Emergency Department at Fletcher Allen Health Care on trauma patients to test our trauma protocol. They are really making things happen!

– Mary Streeter