People ask me about work, so here we go:
I started off in Paediatrics covering the ward which has 45 beds. It is divided into acute(very ill), acute 2(not dead yet), gastro, malnutrition ward and chronic ward(surgical cases- mainly burns-and then a hotchpotch of abandoned and other cold cases). Most of the work we do is around TB and HIV. I started a multidisciplinary team for the malnourished as they were quite neglected at home and on the ward mainly due to lack of time. I enjoyed paediatrics alot and managed to keep the death rate low(3-4 ward deaths per month, which is low considering this is a TB/ HIV haven). The nursery(neonates) is part of obstetrics and allocated to another doc- thank you.
I learnt all about peanuts thanks to nurse TS. Louis and Ralph often turned up to play in the dodgy play area with the kids. We taught the boys rules about proximity and germs and coughing and Louis now has the word MDR(multi-drug resistent TB) as part of his vocabulary.
I then moved on to Primary health care and I have been doing this for the last 3 months. We have 10 peripheral clinics and we visit 2-4 clinics per day. The travel distance to the clinics vary, the furthest being Mboza which is 86 km from the hospitals. Some of these clinics are only accessable with 4x4 , and some are in very beautiful and remote locations. I do general clinics(mainly hypertension which is the hard core type, so blood pressures of 240/120 are quite often noted. It is not just due to Aromat!), anti-retroviral clinics and antenatal clinics. I enjoy these clinics immensely as they cough up anything at anytime...
The patients are very ill most of the time and yes, we do see quite a few snake bites(some requiring anti-venom) and malaria. But HIV and TB dominates the scene and this is a pretty dreadful sight. These diseases are affecting not only the patients but also the staff, and this is often very tragic. One nurse's husband was tragically killed when he drove into a cow, very easy to do because the roads are bad and the cows are not on leads.
To cope with all this we drink heavily and I have started a bridge night.
The hospital has been in the news alot since the beginning of the year. Two stories dominate and both revolve around two of our senior doctors. For those interested, just google Dr Mark Blalock or Dr Colin Pfaff for the full story.
I started off in Paediatrics covering the ward which has 45 beds. It is divided into acute(very ill), acute 2(not dead yet), gastro, malnutrition ward and chronic ward(surgical cases- mainly burns-and then a hotchpotch of abandoned and other cold cases). Most of the work we do is around TB and HIV. I started a multidisciplinary team for the malnourished as they were quite neglected at home and on the ward mainly due to lack of time. I enjoyed paediatrics alot and managed to keep the death rate low(3-4 ward deaths per month, which is low considering this is a TB/ HIV haven). The nursery(neonates) is part of obstetrics and allocated to another doc- thank you.
I learnt all about peanuts thanks to nurse TS. Louis and Ralph often turned up to play in the dodgy play area with the kids. We taught the boys rules about proximity and germs and coughing and Louis now has the word MDR(multi-drug resistent TB) as part of his vocabulary.
I then moved on to Primary health care and I have been doing this for the last 3 months. We have 10 peripheral clinics and we visit 2-4 clinics per day. The travel distance to the clinics vary, the furthest being Mboza which is 86 km from the hospitals. Some of these clinics are only accessable with 4x4 , and some are in very beautiful and remote locations. I do general clinics(mainly hypertension which is the hard core type, so blood pressures of 240/120 are quite often noted. It is not just due to Aromat!), anti-retroviral clinics and antenatal clinics. I enjoy these clinics immensely as they cough up anything at anytime...
The patients are very ill most of the time and yes, we do see quite a few snake bites(some requiring anti-venom) and malaria. But HIV and TB dominates the scene and this is a pretty dreadful sight. These diseases are affecting not only the patients but also the staff, and this is often very tragic. One nurse's husband was tragically killed when he drove into a cow, very easy to do because the roads are bad and the cows are not on leads.
To cope with all this we drink heavily and I have started a bridge night.
The hospital has been in the news alot since the beginning of the year. Two stories dominate and both revolve around two of our senior doctors. For those interested, just google Dr Mark Blalock or Dr Colin Pfaff for the full story.
The top photo is a random footpath on a primary care clinic visit followed by some water carriers on the side of the road in Mozambique.
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