Got a tour of the clinic on Sat (busy) and worked the day in registration, filing patient records. There are 3 different filing systems and over 20,000 records. Looks like patients have the option of keeping their original record with them or leaving it at the clinic. Interesting, from the perspective of privacy...
Chief complaints seem to be malaria and typhoid, with lots of suspected malaria. some reluctance to get HIV tests, but without outreach to encourage and de-stigmatize it, I'm not entirely surprised. I WAS surprised to learn that condom use is believe (locally) to do very little for preventing HIV transmission and MORE surprised to learn that this is true, because someone came up with the bright idea of reusing the condoms instead of buying them time and time again. Tell me again about why the free market is better than subsidized access to certain health care needs?? ;) Clinic does (and plans to do more) outreach and education to local students, although resources are scarce. Clinic also does dental extractions.
Overall - very very busy, but patients are tremendously patient. Service appears affordable but not free. Groups of children come in from nearby schools and orphanages. Info about the clinic was originally advertised in town (Mwanza) but now mainly spread by word of mouth by distributing flyers to women at the local markets (seems more effective).
More later...
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Eugenia! Hi hi! Forgot about your blog until now - will read through later today! Glad you're safe!
ReplyDeleteHello, so finally read through your posts - sounds like much fun!
ReplyDeleteAlso, reusing condoms - wha?! Will add that to communications strategy for project here.
Hope all is well - please don't get partially consumed by fire ants!