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Home / Programs / International Sonography Assistance
Program
International Sonography Assistance Program
The SDMS Foundation’s International Sonography Assistance Program provides support
to SDMS members who are working or assisting in the international healthcare arena.
All requests for assistance must be submitted by a current SDMS member.
2011 SDMS Annual Conference Brings SDMS Member Saidi Kayiranga All the Way From
Rwanda
Saidi joined us from King Feisal Hospital in Kigali, Rwanda for the 2011 SDMS Annual
Conference. He participated in the Cardiac Sonography Tutorial and Track. Saidi
was sponsored by Leif Penrose RT(R) (CT), RDMS, RDCS, RVT and his participation
at the conference was supported through the SDMS Foundation’s International Sonography
Assistance Program.
Penrose, director of ultrasound programs at Georgia Northwestern Technical College
in Rome, had met Kayiranga in 2008 while fulfilling a lifelong dream to work overseas.
Kayiranga worked as a radiographer and CT technologist at King Faisil Hospital,
Kigali, Rwanda, where Penrose had gone in May and June of that year to teach sonography.
“Saidi had a very strong interest in learning to do sonography,” Penrose recalls.
What little sonography was done in Rwanda was done by physicians and was limited
exams.
Unable to find a school that taught echocardiography on the African continent, Kayiranga
was able to come to America in August and study at Georgia Northwestern.
Kayiranga said Rwanda, where the average life expectancy is 56.8 years, has a growing
need for echo cardiographers who can do screening and diagnostic exams. While Rwanda
has only two cardiologists, Team Heart, a team of cardiologists, echocardiographers
and nurses from Boston, visit regularly to assist them in open heart surgery operations
three times a year.
“When I return, I will be the first cardiac sonographer in a country of almost 12
million people,” he said.
For more information, contact the SDMS Foundation at
info@sdmsfoundation.org.
Subject to availability of funds.
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