Mark Slaughter’s Post

The Uganda Embassy finally opened Entebbe Airport to US travel on October 1st so we scrambled. On-Belay had work to do and it was time to go. We were in Africa during the US elections and was thankful for the reprieve. After five years of gathering supply, shipping, finding it (Another story.), teaching, building friendships, surgery, hiring, etc.. We finally have the supply chain solved for the next few years. It’s hard to explain how important that is for our long-term success in advancing spine and ortho trauma surgical care. Our team just became more stable. On-Belay has many great suppliers and we are thankful for every single one. But I need to extend a special thanks to Pat Miles and the ATEC Spine team. This would have been impossible without you and we can’t thank you enough. The Uganda spine program looks a lot like Carlsbad now, it’s mostly deep blue and green. To our surgical team. Dr’s Sekimpi, Nyati, Orwotho, Mugarura, Kironde, Mutanda, Nkundeki, Wattenbarger, McHenry, Ebinu, Hicks, Miller, Hoffman, Meff, and Mbayo. Thanks for believing in what can be. And to the four boys in Gaba who worked there a** off in the heat helping us get this done, plug into ARM and set big goals. Uganda needs more surgeons. Only getting started, m #spinesurgery