We have now finished our two weeks at Mamprobi Polyclinic. The polyclinic is sort of like a mini hospital. There are several different clinics within Mamprobi including STI, Labour and Delivery, Antenatal, Post-natal, Nutrition, Recovery, Community Psychiatric, Community Health and Family Planning.
Thanks for the dresses mom!!!
Day 1: Community Psychiatric: Mondays is when patients come to the clinic for counseling. The most common psychiatric illnesses are alcohol induced psychosis, schizophrenia, tension headaches, and epilepsy (which is a little strange that they would treat that as a mental illness). These are just a few, there are a lot actually. Counseling is done quite a bit differently than in Canada. There is no privacy for the patient. I sat in a small room with the counselor, 6 nursing students and two nurses and the patient. The counselor was actually a reverend at a Pentecostal church and he also does spiritual healing. He is also a registered psychiatric nurse. Quite the combo.
Day 2: STI Clinic: Today I was put in the STI clinic. In a span of 20 minutes two pregnant women were diagnosed with HIV, one of whom has been married for 10 years and has three children. The nurse called her husband and told him that his wife was HIV positive and that he and the children should come to the clinic right away for testing. The nurse was really excellent with these patients. This was a really hard day for me actually. I had a huge lump in my throat while the nurses were telling these women their results. But I guess that’s just reality here.
Day 3: Psychiatric Home Visit: Today we did what is called “home tracing”. This is where the psych team will go out into the community and try to figure out where their patient’s live from some very obscure directions they were given by the patient. The directions are usually along the lines of “drive to the corner store, turn right at the green fence, turn left down the alley with the three black goats, then turn right at the garbage pile”. It is very tricky finding these places. Also patients will usually give out fake address because mental illness has such a stigma here.
Day 4: Labour and Delivery: Busy day on the ward today. We got there just in time to see a placenta being delivered and then we got to watch a birth right after. It seemed quite a bit different than at home. There were about 8 nursing students watching the birth and two mid-wives delivering the baby. No one really talked to the mother the entire time this was happening. After the baby was born they immediately gave him a bath. They pretty much scrubbed that baby raw. After about an hour, the mother was finally able to hold her baby.
Day 5: Child-Welfare Clinic: Today I went out into the community with the nurses and we set up a little baby clinic, outside under a tree. We vaccinated and weighed the babies. The nurses even let me do some of the vaccinations and also the teaching about nutrition. They also made me read out everyone’s name, I’m pretty sure they did this just to laugh at me trying to pronounce them.
Administering oral Polio vaccine
Day 6: Child-Welfare Clinic: Today I went with the nurses to a very poor area of Accra for a baby clinic. We first had to go into the community to let the people know that we were running the clinic. The nurses just knocked on everyone’s door because they said there would be at least one baby in every home. There is a lot of polygamy in this area and many of the mothers have around 10 children each. The people here tend to use a lot of traditional medicine and their overall health is very poor. The conditions of this community were the worst I’ve seen. Everyone lives in such close quarters. None of the adults were at work and none of the kids were at school. The nurses said that this is their most challenging area. They say that the mothers always say they’ll come to the clinic, but then they never show up. A lot of the babies at this clinic were not gaining or they were loosing weight. This community definitely needs a lot of education.
Pictures taken while visiting community
Day 7: Childwelfare Clinic: Today was a very busy day. Laurie and I went to do a baby clinic with the community nurses. We powered through 72 babies in about three hours. It was crazy, but the nurses have a very efficient system.
Impitego: Common skin condition in children here
Day 8: School Health: Me and three other students went to a school where we assessed around 400 kids with only the help of a couple more nurses. There were a lot of dental carries, rashes, ringworm and boyles on the kids. They were soooo cute! And so excited for us to be there.
And that’s it for Mamprobi, March 27 we head out to a village for a week to do a community assessment.
Random Pictures
How can I come to Africa and not golf?? Here we are at the Achimota Golf Course in Accra, the most prestigious course in Ghana. It wasn't quite as nice as our courses at home. The greens were usually covered in sand, which made it tough to putt. We felt like starts though, as we had two caddies that did everything for us! And yes I realize our outfits are kinda funny, we were scrambling around our rez the night before looking for collared shirts!
Nothing like trying to hit your ball over a termite hill!
Golfing with our mandatory caddies: Kevin and Dennis
Hawkers selling you anything you can imagine. No need to even get out of your car!
Cutting grass with a machete.... lots of fun!
Dinner???
Dear Erin,
ReplyDeleteHello my name is Thomas Herrera, I am an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering at UT Austin. I am currently enrolled in my senior design class that applies engineering design methodology to solve an open ended problem submitted by industrial sponsors. Here is the website for our class, http://www.me.utexas.edu/sdp/, I am contacting you to ask if my team and I could ask you a few questions over your exposure to baby clinics in Africa? The reason for this request is in response to our senior design project at UT Austin and reading your blog.
This is the context of our project:
Our project centers around a vehicle called a Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) which is a small 3 wheeled truck that has a high torque to carry large loads in its truck bed. These vehicles are being implemented throughout West Africa, but the main hub is in Ghana. The organization that is making these BUVs is called the Institute for Affordable Transportation (IAT). Their website is http://www.drivebuv.org/
Our senior design team will be attempting to design a mobile baby clinic that will be added to the bed of the BUV that incorporates stations for children and baby examinations, store refrigerated pharmaceuticals, store medical equipment, and transport a recumbent patient. I was hoping you could you answer a few of our following questions?
1. What medical treatments are commonly performed in an infant and children's checkup?
2. Sanitation is a major issue to not transport any disease from one patient to another. How do nurses secure sanitation?
3. What are the basics that you think should be included in a infant/children's clinic?
4. What pharmaceuticals/medicines are used the most often?
5. Are there any refrigeration devices or techniques that are available or often used to store pharmaceuticals?
6. What medical supplies are readily available or often used?
7. What methods are currently used to transport recumbent patients?
8. How many villages would be visited in a day and how long does a group stay?
9. Do you know of any current mobile clinics? If so, do you know of any current improvements that should be made or any current problems that they might encounter?
These are just some of questions we have. You do not have to answer all the questions and my team and I appreciate any help you can give us. I could not find your email address to ask you these questions and they are quite urgent for us to design a useful system. Feel free to respond to me through my email, tomherrera007@hotmail.com.
Thank you and hopefully we can be in contact soon.
Sincerely,
Thomas Herrera