Hello!!
My name is Frederieke de Smid, I am 24 years old and am currently doing the master Biomedical Engineering at the TU Delft. As a part of the second year of my master’s degree, I am currently conducting an internship for Unifix Care in Nairobi and Kampala. Unifix is a European surgical instrument supplier based in the Netherlands, focused on improving healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa. They want to achieve this by selling affordable though high quality surgical instruments. Here, the company has cut a niche by only selling stainless steel surgical instrument sets like cesarean instrument sets. My aim for the internship is to assure the quality of the instruments Unifix is selling. I am doing this by comparing Unifix’s instruments to instruments from local Kenyan distributors and by conducting interviews in local hospitals with everyday users like nurses and CSSD (central sterile services department) staff. This helps me to understand the most likely reason for the disposal of surgical instruments. With this information, Unifix is making continuous improvements to increase the quality of their instruments and make them more durable!
