East Lancashire hospitals offer life-saving help to Sierra Leone (From Chorley Citizen)

East Lancashire hospitals offer life-saving help to Sierra Leone

4:00pm Tuesday 19th February 2013 in East Lancashire By Lisa Woodhouse, Assistant picture editor

TWO East Lancashire hospitals have donated life saving equipment to a hospital in Sierra Leone.

The Royal Blackburn Hospital and Burnley General Hospital have donated supplies such as lighting, ultra sound equipment and other medical equipment to retired Great Harwood doctor David Goodall, who has travelled to the country with a group of fellow methodists.

Local methodist preacher and retired obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Goodall is still in Sierra Leone working on behalf of the Liverpool School of tropical medicines.

John Spencer, who also went on the trip, said: “Ten people from the methodist church throughout Lancashire went to Sierra Leone.

“The group has been out a few times, but this last time we went out to the Nixon Memorial Hospital in Segbwema to help install equipment in the operating theatre.

“Dr Goodall managed to secure some equipment from Blackburn and Burnley hospitals and a hospital in Glasgow to kit out the operating theatre.

“The group also kitted out a small injuries clinic and a casualty room.”

The group of 10, including Linda Arstell from Heapey, John Summerscales from Pendle and Paul Yates from Darwen, spent two weeks in the country, which is still recovering from more than a decade of civil war.

The Nixon Memorial Hospital was occupied by the rebel forces during the conflict and the methodists have been helping to renovate, rebuild and establish health care.

The hospital used to have an enviable reputation in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. But today the 100-bed hospital in the east of the country is a shadow of its former self, attempting to provide healthcare to its local population with just rudimentary equipment.

The 12-year civil war which threatened to tear Sierra Leone apart also wreaked devastation on the hospital itself.

Staff at the Methodist Church-run hospital, which has just one doctor, do their best to provide their patients with the best possible care in a country that has been designated by the United Nations as one of the most dangerous in the world to have a child.