In South Sudan, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) serves some 1.5 million people who would otherwise have very little access to quality health care. But a lack of trained medical professionals and basic diagnostic tools complicates matters. Medical personnel generally rely on observed and reported symptoms—and a certain amount of educated guesswork—to make a diagnosis. If an X-ray is needed, it could be a long and bumpy drive along an unpaved road, or even a flight, to the nearest working machine.
To address this problem, MSF is implementing point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS). This innovation compacts a traditionally bulky technology and makes it accessible in the most remote locations, where non-specialist clinicians can use it directly at the patient’s bedside. In this video report, we follow Ezibon, clinical officer at MSF’s Agok Hospital in South Sudan, as he learns to use this technology and reflects on the transformational impact it has on the quality of care he provides to his patients. “One of the strengths of MSF is our locally hired staff, [who] are the vast majority of our clinicians,” says Dr. Adi Nadimpalli, the MSF medic training Ezibon and other colleagues across South Sudan to use POCUS. “They’re incredibly talented, incredibly brilliant, […and] they can now have greater independence and are empowered to make more clinical decisions on their own.”