Bedford biomedical engineer joins emergency health charity to fight Covid in East Africa

A Bedford biomedical engineer has joined an international emergency health charity UK-Med to help fight the pandemic in Djibouti, East Africa.

Rob Shutt, together with a doctor and two nurses from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Benin are providing specialist training to healthcare workers to prepare for a future surge of Covid.

The charity - UK-Med - is training staff in four hospitals in the capital, Djibouti City for three months.

The 26-year-old from Kempston been supporting teams to install, use and maintain critical care equipment including ventilators and oxygen supplies.

Rob said: "Once the assessments were done, we realised one of the first issues we needed to highlight was around precautions when interacting with medical equipment.... so thorough decontamination processes, the wearing of appropriate PPE and equipment safety inspections."

Rob has worked as a biomedical engineer for five years supporting organisations in the UK and across Africa. He currently works for Optimum Biomedical in Milton Keynes.