After a smooth seven hour flight, we landed in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, at nine this morning. It was good to be back and step out into the warm sun. There were six of us on the flight. Dr. Maggie Capenter, the founder of GoDocGo, Patricia Bacon, GoDocGo program director, Dr. Kristen Austin, Dr. Tom Meyer, Allegra Itsoga, Director of Le Korsa and Julie Stevenson, GoDocGo board member and resident blogger.

Dr. Maggie Carpenter, Dr. Kristen Austin, Pat Bacon, Julie Stevenson and Tom Meyer – Allegra took the picture

Vieux Toute is the In-Country program director in Senegal here with Dr. Kristen Austin

We did not linger in Dakar. The GoDocGo team headed three hours east to the Hospital Regional de Kaolack and worked with Dr. Sy and two other OBGYN colleagues. The GoDocGo team had been to this hospital in June to do screenings and training. Today we brought a LEEP machine which can burn away any legions that appear on a women’s cervix and can cause cancer in the future.

Maggie and Kristen preparing

The purpose of our visit today was to train the doctors on how to use the machine and to treat ten women who needed to be rescreened due to some concerns. We also brought a thermal ablation gun that can be used to remove very small legions. At the end of the day, two of the ten women needed treatment that we could provide. The others were either normal or needed treatment that we could not provide.

The doctors practiced using the new machine on a chicken.

Drs. Sy, Sene and Bakhoum work with the GoDocGo doctors

At Kaolack, Allegra and Tom continued on the journey to Tambacunda where we all met later in the evening. Starting Wednesday, Tom will be teaching writing to young women who go to school in Tambacunda.

More to come today. Internet problems yesterday!!