A remote town in war-torn South Sudan now has a reliable health care service thanks to the volunteer efforts of a local Launceston business.
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Mode Electrical owner Martin Dingemanse was approached to design, build and install a reliable, self-sufficient power source for a hospital in a remote South Sudanese town, Nzara.
The Nzara hospital sees 100 patients a day and has 30,000 outpatients, 2000 HIV clients and 3000 inpatients.
It's a solution that literally saves lives
- Mode Electrical owner Martin Dingemanse
Since the power system was installed the hospital has reliable 24-hour power, allowing them to refrigerate blood and specialist medicine and perform medical procedures day or night with adequate lighting.
“It's a solution that literally saves lives. Without it, yes okay you might have medical staff but they're limited without power,” Mr Dingemanse said.
Mode Electrical travelled to South Sudan to install a self contained solar power system in January amid rising tensions in the country, which has suffered 15 years of civil war.
“It was a pretty raw experience of how civil war really affects the villages,” Mr Dingemanse said. Previously the hospital relied on an intermittent diesel generator for power. Due to ongoing civil war diesel is a rare commodity.
“If you're trying to run a hospital and all you've got is a generator and you can't get diesel then you can't have power,” Mr Dingemanse said.
The Mode Electrical team spent 3 months fitting out a 20 foot shipping container to be a self contained power station; insulating it, installing inverters, switchboards and 12 tonne of batteries and then testing it before shipping it off. Once complete, the container weighed 16 tonnes.
The team had to negotiate with the United Nations to bring a container forklift from a nearby town to unload the equipped container.
Being able to apply his skills and make a difference in third world countries is something Mr Dingemanse is passionate about.
“I guess the words bigger than us. It's bigger than me and bigger than us here and I think there's such a big need out there and I guess I feel like I've got the ability and the capacity to help out in some way,” he said.
Mr Dingemanse is now looking at a potential project for a technical college in Uganda.