Dreamland Mission Hospital
Theatre Expansion
Providing services that truly benefit and transform the lives of the poorest and hardest to reach communities.
Our theatre project is supplying a much-needed expansion of our surgical capabilities!
The operations we provide at DMH are unique in our location and life-changing for the patients involved. The number of general surgical patients we receive and the elective surgery we offer for club foot, cataracts, fistula and cleft lip, has meant a constant demand for our one main operating theatre. This has posed significant problems for our maternity and other emergency services. For example, if a woman arrived needing an emergency C-section but the existing theatre was already in use, she would have to make an unsafe journey to another hospital, perhaps three hours away on rough roads.
Now, after a long journey of fundraising and construction, Phase 1 of a new theatre block is almost complete and the new theatre is open!
Construction commenced in July 2023. We employed over 75 local staff, paying them weekly, enabling them to feed their families and send their children to school.
All the work was done by hand, including digging the foundations, carrying water to site, mixing cement and making the wooden scaffolding. As land around the hospital is tight, the block was built to accommodate three floors. In time these floors will house three fully functioning theatres and potentially small high dependency units.
In Phase 1 our amazing supporters raised a huge £197,000, allowing us to complete one operating theatre, with two dedicated recovery areas, a staff changing area to allow for a fully sterile environment, a scrubbing up area and room for emergency trauma patients who will come from the new A&E that is being built on site. A dedicated central sterilisation area has been set up to allow for all equipment to be sterilised and then distributed to the hospital. This ensures that we maintain the best standards in our rural environment.
New equipment (shipped from the UK by Medical Aid International (MedAid)) has been installed and staff trained, both on the equipment itself and in biomedical engineering by MedAid. We now have a new anaesthetic machine, theatre lights, suction, a diathermy machine and a special operating table allowing for orthopaedic surgery, women’s health surgery, life-saving abdominal surgery and more. Additionally, there are ten new sets of surgical equipment and all the sterilisation equipment required to run an excellent service.
But the work isn't finished yet...
In Phase 2 of this project we aim to see the remaining space in the block finished and equipped as another working theatre. We are seeking to raise £50,000 to get this fully complete. Could you help us raise these funds? Anything you can give will be greatly appreciated – thank you!
Life Changing Stories
Silas had been experiencing lower abdominal pain and frequent urination. He went to a hospital near his home but didn’t receive any medical attention due to a nurses’ strike. He went home discouraged. Then a neighbour told him about Dreamland Mission Hospital. When he arrived at DMH he noticed that the staff were professional and caring, and he was received well in every department he went to. An ultrasound found that Silas needed surgery for benign prostate hypertrophy.
Silas had never had surgery before and the thought of it scared him, but with clear guidance and reassurance from the staff, he was happy to have the procedure. “I thank God for the nurses here; they helped me to relax as I waited for my surgery to take place.”
The surgery went well and Silas was discharged to return home. “I’m so grateful to have a well-equipped hospital with professional medical staff so close to my home.”