Level Up

The second week was for understanding the problem and the design criteria. We had two presentations on Monday and Friday. The presentations were great. In attendance we had Will Moyo, Hillary Lodzanyama, Joseph Chikaphonya, Francis Chilomo and Hope Chilunga.

During the week I learnt a lot on how to present ideas in a confident way while maintaining the context of the presentation. It was challenging but our TAs helped us to produce the best presentations.

In the course of the week, we also conducted several interviews with people in the sectors related to our projects. We had an interview with George and Vitumbiko who are engineers at the NEST 360 warehouse, we also interviewed a biomedical engineer at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital by the name Aron Major. All these interviews opened our minds to the problems that the health sector is currently facing. Some of these include;

• Lack of enough oxygen concentrators since most of them are damaged and the cost of maintenance is too high hence rendering most of them useless

• Lack of proper methods of disinfecting face masks other PPE’s which makes increases the rate of transmission of bacteria and virus between patients and health workers

• Reuse of face masks without disinfecting them.

The second week was more productive. I had learnt a lot of skills and had a clear understanding of the solutions that we are supposed to come up with. The interviews opened our minds to tailor made solutions as required in Malawi.

Another beneficial thing was that I learnt how to work with people from different departments so that together we can come up with best solutions. My team members are very supportive and understanding. They challenge me and have learnt a lot from them and I hope to keep on learning

Am looking forward to the third week where we will have presentations on entrepreneurship and we will be producing prototypes of our projects.