Neonate/Paediatric Oximeter

I'm currently a medical student volunteer at the Naankuse Lifeline Clinic in Epukiro, northern Namibia. Their website is lifelineclinic.org. The clinics mainly serves the marginalised original San Bushmen of Namibia. Infants and young children are common patients at the clinic, often presenting with respiratory symptoms. We don't have neonatal/paediatric oximeters here, only adult ones, which makes it difficult to assess the severity of these children's illness as children have small fingers which don't reach the readers, or they squirm and it falls off..there are many reasons! Oximeters tell you what percentage of the blood is saturated with oxygen. This is clinically important, as it can tell you if a patient needs oxygen, needs to be admitted to hospital, and so on. It tells you about how well the lungs are functioning, and whether the patient needs respiratory support. I saw a 7 month old girl today with a one day history of cough and a runny nose. Her temperature was 39.4 degrees, she was grunting (a sign of respiratory distress), and we could hear crackles in her lungs (infection). We were trying to assess the severity of her illness, and eventually we managed to get the adult oximeter to work, which showed it was 92% and she should be admitted to hospital. However, this was after trying about 4 adult oximeters, with many of them giving false readings. I realised how much we need a paediatric oximeter here, for fast, accurate results to help assess paediatric patients. This is on the lifeline clinic's wish list, found here lifelineclinic.org/donation/wish-list, and it costs about 350 pounds. If you would like to contribute to the fantastic work the Lifeline Clinic is doing by helping to supply them with a paediatric oxometer, please donate! Thank you very much :) X

As Naankuse is not on JustGiving, I thought I would set up this page and pass on any funds myself! If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know :)