So we’ve officially been here one week, and what a week it’s been!

Yian and I were on our own for the weekend, so we spent most of it exploring Barretos. Barretos is a fairly small city (about 100,000 people), but we were able to walk to the local mall. We’ve been hearing a lot about it – mostly everyone has been excited to tell us that there’s a McDonald’s there! We decided to forego Mickey D’s and made our own meal of chicken and noodles instead. A very good bonding experience I would say!

We’ve spent a lot of time this week in meetings demonstrating and discussing our technologies with people from the hospital, so I thought I would give you a short run-down of the tech we have with us.

First up is the Global Focus Microscope.

The Global Focus Microscope (GFM) was developed by BTB primarily for rural clinics who needed to perform lab tests that required microscopy, but were unable to afford a microscope or didn’t have a consistent power supply to power the microscope.

The GFM meets this need exceptionally. It is a bright-field and fluorescence microscope that is run completely on batteries. It is portable and low-cost, making it effective for rural areas and traveling healthcare workers. Further, a removable stand was developed to hold phones with cameras over the microscope so a picture can be taken of the magnified sample and be sent electronically to a hospital or any other location.

We’ve been discussing using the GFM here in Barretos with many of the physicians in the Prevention Unit, because we can see how it may be of use in the Mobile Units that they have for the hospital. So far everyone has been really excited about the GFM and it’s potential uses, and they have a lot of ideas about applications for the GFM. It’s very exciting getting to work with these doctors!

Secondly, we have Wooden Gynecological Stirrups.

The stirrups were originally part of the Gynecological Diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack (LIAB), but because of some unfortunate visa issues, we were unable to bring any of the LIABs with us to Brazil. But! We did bring the instructions for building these gynecological stirrups with us, and we have successfully assembled one here in-country. (Though they still require padding on the foot rests – hopefully we can get that done tomorrow morning.)

These stirrups were developed to enable easier gynecological exams for mobile healthcare workers. Many times, these healthcare workers go door-to-door in underserved communities and are invited into a woman’s home to perform the exam. These stirrups can be set up on any table or flat surface, and they are also designed to be lightweight and, as we’ve proven, easily manufactured in-country, which makes them appropriate for developing countries.

Tomorrow we will be meeting with a doctor from the Gynecological Unit who has been working closely with the Mobile Units that screen for cervical cancer, and hopefully we should get some good feedback from him about how and where these stirrups can be used most effectively.

And that’s all she wrote folks! We’ve only brought these two technologies with us, but everyone has been very excited about our presentations so far, and we’ve got a lot of ideas to work with.

See you next time! Tchau!

Jessica