At the beginning of July, I joined the team in Jimma, consisting of Falk Nessenius, senior physician at the Clinic for Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery at Lucerne Cantonal Hospital, and Séline Kaiser, physiotherapist. As planned, together with Pélé, who had already arrived in Jimma with Falk and Séline in the middle of the week, I immediately entered into intensive negotiations with the CEO of the Medical Center, Dr. Essayas, and the head of the Department of Surgery at Jimma University, Dr. Daniel Getachew, about the infrastructure that Jimma University could provide for the adequate treatment of accident victims in our foundation's new annex building. In a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), we agreed on the conditions necessary to establish and operate a training center for orthopedists and traumatologists. We were also received by the president of Jimma University (picture above), who was very impressed by the efforts of our foundation and will be responsible for ensuring that our team, together with local orthopedist Dr. Mulusew and the residents, has access to modern new infrastructure in the form of a new 75-bed ward and two newly built operating rooms in addition to the current new operating room. In return, our foundation is responsible for providing the necessary implants, for the transfer of know-how, for quality assurance and for the implementation of a hygiene concept, as well as for setting up a trauma register. We have also approached the Department of Health Sciences and Medicine at the University of Lucerne about a potential partnership. The relevant documents are now circulating for signature, and we hope to be able to move into the new premises in the near future.

In addition, I discussed process flows for optimizing care with the team, and we have applied to the hospital management for the necessary office, storage, and preparation facilities. Together with the team, I assisted with several procedures (left image), and we were already able to successfully use the flexible nail set financed by the foundation on two children (center and right images).