Bongolo Hospital: Recovery Update

February 5, 2014

By Paul Davis, an Alliance team member, who is the maintenance supervisor at Bongolo Hospital in Gabon, West Africa

The following is an adapted excerpt from the Davis’s recent update.

Twelve days after a fire destroyed Bongolo Hospital’s electrical transformer, our new transformer is installed and fully operational.

This quick turnaround is unheard of in Gabon, where projects of this sort normally take six months! We now have a great system with many built in protections, which we didn’t have before. Thanks for all your prayers!

Answer to Prayer

During the 12 days we were without the transformer—except for a few minutes during which we checked fluids and did some maintenance—the backup generator performed flawlessly. This also was an answer to prayer!

A few short weeks before the fire, the generator wasn’t running. Lightning had taken out a switch that automatically turns the generator on when the power goes out.

Currently, our generator is on manual mode. To illustrate, says Dr. Renee Valach, “. . . If the lights go out in the middle of surgery, the surgeon has to leave the operating room, run down a hill, and manually flip the switch for the lights to come back on!”

Money has been donated to replace the switch, and we are looking into every option since we want it to work well now and in the future.

Thank you so much for your prayers, which strengthen and encourage us.