Clinic was held at Gona dam today – where the water sanitation project Nigel – an SDA engineer from Tweed Shire Council- is heading. Today was better organized and not as busy as yesterday. We saw approximately 250 people: cases from a young 19year man with Retinitis pigmentosa??? a young 17 year old woman wioth possible breast cancer and an elderly woman with advanced cancer, hypertension, muscular aches and pains, chest ailments, various skin infections including Jiggers – the worst case belonging to an elderly man- to dehydration.
Again, no cases of malnutrition which was good to see. 7 cases of those with jiggers were used to demonstrate upon, in order to train the community health workers, one case was a 12 year old girl. Each was given a new basin, detol, healing salve and dudu dust. Kenya health paid for supplies to treat 100 homes, ( a total cost of about $1300au ) which will be a fantastic start in eradicating this scourge for the people. Once the training was done, a formal meeting to discuss the practicalities of running such a program took place.
A valuable lesson was learnt by two of our volunteers who unwittingly gave out personal information to a young man ie email addresses, and who later took their photo’s. Olita and the elders spoke firmly to him and confiscated his phone, paying him for it, as identity theft is a very real threat, even in a 3rd world country, or especially in a 3rd world country where they are so desperately poor. Finally we left Gona dam approx 4.30pm, leaving behind many grateful people. We had planned to run a 3 day clinic in this region but as numbers had declined today we’ve decided to move on to our next destination a day earlier. Sleep tonight escaped us as a very loud crusade was being held right next door and went on all night, just as well we’re not running a clinic tomorrow, on no sleep.
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.