Last Day In Ilula and Another Mobile Clinic
Trip Start
Jan 12, 2010
1
4
Trip End
Jan 29, 2010
Tungamalenga, Tanzania
Saturday, January 30, 2010
January 23, 2010
We were up bright and early to say goodbye to Ilula and to head off to Image, which is about 18km from Ilula to conduct another mobile HIV clinic. Image is another location the hospital in Ilula serves. It was a Saturday morning so that means the nurses and a couple of the doctors work all week and then get up early to drive out to see patients on what should be their day off. Image is just 18km from Ilula but the road conditions are so bad it takes about an hour to get there. Bountiful rains have flooded low lying areas and washed out many parts of the roads to the remote areas making it incredibly difficult to get to many of these mobile clinics. GREAT for the crops bad for the roads. There were about 100 patients waiting for us when we arrived and again the patients receive a mass counseling session on safety practices and the importance of taking the anti retroviral medications (ARV). Each remote location gets a clinic once a month. Last Saturday it was Kipaduka (one of my other entries).
After seeing a few patients in Image, we headed off to Tungamalenga (a 3 hour tour on more wicked roads) to work in the dispensary there. A dispensary is a place where people who live in remote areas come for health care. A dispensary is usually staffed by some form of medical officer (two years of training) and a nurse or two who has a two year class under her belt. Dispensaries also receive a small amount of support from the Tanzanian government for medications and few supplies. Our group has sponsored this dispensary and they now have running water and lovely clean rooms and beds to help provide more adequate health care to the residents. I was very impressed by the cleanliness of the place and absolutely loved working with the staff there. The nearest hospital is 100km away in Iringa and the nearest health center (a health center usually has one or two medical doctors with a few trained nurses) is 30km from the Tungamalenga dispensary. It's hard for me to try and convey the kind of desperation we see here. For the most part, the patients we saw in the dispensary were sent away with antibiotics for minor infections, pregnant moms seen for routine antenatal care and people with common parasites. What if someone had a dire need for a hospital? Severe bleeing? What if a woman was in labor having complications? Cars are not available and the "local" bus comes through once a day at 5:30a.m. If you were lucky enough to own a bicycle or know someone who had one, maybe you could hitch a ride on the back of a bike for 30km to the nearest health center on a ridiculously rough dirt road. No thanks. I’ll stick to my 1996 Saturn (go Janie) and those fabulous Minnesota roads (ode to potholes). We are continually brainstorming and discussing things we’ve seen trying to come up with innovative ways to improve the quality of healthcare in these “in the middle of nowhere” places. We also continue to encourage and support the outstanding human beings that are serving their communities in the Tungamalenga area. Take Barnabas, for instance. He’s the clinical officer running the dispensary in Tungamalenga. On the day we left, he was called by another dispensary (30km away) to insert an IUD in a woman who was interested in contraception. Barnabas drove with us to the next village of Idote to make sure we made it (half the road had been washed away from rains from the day before), walked home then rode his bicycle 30km to go assist the woman awaiting care in the next village dispensary. This is just one of the examples of the dedication to the community I witnessed in some of the people of Tungamalenga.
We were all sad to leave Tungamalenga. It has truly been one of the highlights of my trip! I learned how to transplant rice plant seedlings and work in the shamba (field), a few greetings in the Masai language and enjoyed a couple hours of an afternoon safari (Tungamalenga is located just outside of Ruaha National Park) seeing giraffe, elephants, warthogs, zebras and the majestic flora and fauna of the Great Rift Valley. I look forward to my next visit to this area and value my new friends here, as they are some of the most fabulous people I’ve ever met.
Comments
Thank for your help, I apreciate you!!