Hey folks,
So things are still winding down here. We are mostly done seeing patients, though we are going to try to squeeze a few more in, possibly on Friday. Liora is heading back to Israel tonight :( so we are really faced with the end of our trip.
Our final number of patients ended up being 130, plus another 27 patients were are deceased (157 total)
We were really pleased to have seen more than 100 and I think we will be able to draw some interesting conclusions both from the medical and social follow up questionnaire from this project. We are now trying to figure out where the remaining 200 or so patients are and why we could not reach them. So far, we have learned that either people have moved, left the country, died or simply prefer not to be in contact. We have had some patients just refuse to come in.
There is also a group of rheumatic patients (women) that are boycotting us because we have not met their demands to find a solution to the fact that they need to be taking warfarin and therefore cannot get pregnant. On the one hand, we have all be sympathetic to them, especially in a country where getting married is such a big part of a woman's security. On the other hand, each of the women would not be alive if not having been treated in Israel (for free, might I add) and we are very frustrated that they refuse to come in for follow up to "teach us a lesson"
We are compiling a list of the deceased patients (Liora has been working on that) to figure out the reasons.
One other difficulty was timing. We came on very short notice to Addis Ababa and it required a lot of good fortune that the cardiologist we are working with happened to be free at this time. We saw as many patients as well could in a day (sometimes close to 20 in a single day). We are now going to discuss and figure out if we can get more patients in to follow up with a bit more notice, and perhaps I (Will) may return during pesach break (the girls will not have the time off.... an advantage to still being a medical student) and finish up whatever we can... We will be exploring that today.
In other news, we had a great dinner last night. We were treated by the doctors and went to a great restaurant with live music and dance. The food was excellent and we should be fine to not eat again for 2 or 3 days.
Today we are coming to the hospital with gifts for everyone...
more on that later.
best from us
Will (Liora and Liad)
So things are still winding down here. We are mostly done seeing patients, though we are going to try to squeeze a few more in, possibly on Friday. Liora is heading back to Israel tonight :( so we are really faced with the end of our trip.
Our final number of patients ended up being 130, plus another 27 patients were are deceased (157 total)
We were really pleased to have seen more than 100 and I think we will be able to draw some interesting conclusions both from the medical and social follow up questionnaire from this project. We are now trying to figure out where the remaining 200 or so patients are and why we could not reach them. So far, we have learned that either people have moved, left the country, died or simply prefer not to be in contact. We have had some patients just refuse to come in.
There is also a group of rheumatic patients (women) that are boycotting us because we have not met their demands to find a solution to the fact that they need to be taking warfarin and therefore cannot get pregnant. On the one hand, we have all be sympathetic to them, especially in a country where getting married is such a big part of a woman's security. On the other hand, each of the women would not be alive if not having been treated in Israel (for free, might I add) and we are very frustrated that they refuse to come in for follow up to "teach us a lesson"
We are compiling a list of the deceased patients (Liora has been working on that) to figure out the reasons.
One other difficulty was timing. We came on very short notice to Addis Ababa and it required a lot of good fortune that the cardiologist we are working with happened to be free at this time. We saw as many patients as well could in a day (sometimes close to 20 in a single day). We are now going to discuss and figure out if we can get more patients in to follow up with a bit more notice, and perhaps I (Will) may return during pesach break (the girls will not have the time off.... an advantage to still being a medical student) and finish up whatever we can... We will be exploring that today.
In other news, we had a great dinner last night. We were treated by the doctors and went to a great restaurant with live music and dance. The food was excellent and we should be fine to not eat again for 2 or 3 days.
Today we are coming to the hospital with gifts for everyone...
more on that later.
best from us
Will (Liora and Liad)
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