Repairing Medical Equipment in Africa




After visiting Africa over break, I had to a chance to ask Dr. Jackson, CEO of Project: CURE what I, a motivated engineer, could do to help build a stable infrastructure in Africa. Dr. Jackson proceeded to tell me how Project: CURE leads the non-profit medical industry by donating over 40 million dollars of medical equipment to Africa each year. That said, no economy in Africa exists medical equipment when it inevitably breaks. All across the continent, a broken health monitor is doorstop. Equipment that determines whether people live or die, is sitting in the clinic’s closets. Furthermore, the few people who know to fix medical equipment (rarer than even doctors) are transported out of the country through brain drain. Currently, the best way to fix a broken piece of equipment is to hope to get a new one donated soon. This is how I started my long term partnership with Project: CURE, dedicated to fixing a simple problem, no organization in Africa is keeping the medical industry sustainable. As Dr. Jackson puts it, “Repairing Medical Equipment in Africa is the number one problem that needs to be addressed today”.