Hello all,
Thursday: So I was excited to head back to the hospital and see some surgeries again today. The operations today were on children. One with a cyst that needed to be drained and one with undescended testes. Also there were a couple hernia repairs. All went smoothly and then they ran out of sterile gowns so they CANCELLED THE REST OF THE SURGERIES! Shocking. You would think that they would have had enough gowns prepared to do all the surgeries that were scheduled for the day. I mean, what if there was an emergency.
This brought about a new questions for me: How much of the medical conditions here can be blamed an sheer laziness? The more I talk to people here, the more I am learning that the problem is less with finances and more with what to do with that money and the willingness of the population to make changes happen. Guests are so common and they come here with so much money and supplies, but there is little motivation from the local community to fend for themselves. They are almost reliant on the missions that come through to do the work for them.
I also went by the pediatric department to stop in and say hello to the cardiologist (who works in the only air conditioned room in the hospital). When I was here last time, I spent some time with him doing ECHO examinations and he remembered me. He is important to me because if I am to come back here in 2013 to do another follow up project, I will need his help with the examinations. I'll be joining him on Monday to do echoes and I will speak to him about my plans then.
So I left the hospital, in shock, at around 2pm. The heat here really exhausts me. I can hardly drink enough water and I am drinking water all day. In the evening, I went to meet with a woman I had met last time I was here. We met on a bus going to the north of the Island. She is in her 60s or so and has been living on the Island for about 10 years (originally from the US). She has started a organization called Participate Now! and she does little projects around the island. She does not, however, play by the typical NGO rules and therefore does not raise money very well. But she works with the locals and facilitates their self empowerment (she made it clear to me when we first met that she does not believe that one can empower another, rather one must empower themselves). We stayed in touch a little bit since last time I was in Zanzibar and I got back in touch with her again before I came this time to see if there was any small projects that medical students could be a part of. She didn't know of anything personally, but she connected me with a whole bunch of people in the ministry of health and I will be meeting with them after the weekend.
We sat for about 4 hours on her rooftop apartment that has a 360 degree view of the city. It was an amazing little place and we talked about a million different things. She even offered to do my laundry for me if I needed it (which I do...badly).
Afterwards, I was pretty much down for the evening.
Friday: Today I went to a town on the other side of the island called Makunduchi. It is a tiny little town that really has nothing except for a little medical project called the Makunduchi project (you can google it if you are interested). It is a small 30 bed clinic/hospital and that operated within the community. I met a nice doctor from the UK who is there for 6 months doing a bit of everything. I was really interested in their facility because it is much more within the community than the hospital in Stone Town and I think it would be a great hands-on experience for medical students from my school. Plus, there could be some nice opportunity for some good community research projects there.
It was a hassle getting there and involved sitting next to many roads and flagging down many people hoping to get a ride across the island. The distance isn't very far, but getting there took forever. Then it started to rain again, hardcore! African rain. It comes almost without warning and then disappears as quickly. It's mother nature at her finest.
So that is basically what I have done for the last few days. This weekend, I am heading up to the north part of the Island to get some beach and relaxation. I am going with some of my flatmates here (germans). We are renting bungalows on the beach for about $15/night with breakfast included. It's a pretty special place. I will be taking pictures.
Next week will be my last week here. My plans are to spend some time in the maternity ward and hopefully deliver some babies and get some experience with that. I will try to watch some surgeries as well and I may go back to makunduchi later in the week and try to spend a day or two there before heading back to Israel.
I am energized and feeling really good about things here. Not sleep very well, because of the heat, but I feel generally well.
lots of love
Will
Thursday: So I was excited to head back to the hospital and see some surgeries again today. The operations today were on children. One with a cyst that needed to be drained and one with undescended testes. Also there were a couple hernia repairs. All went smoothly and then they ran out of sterile gowns so they CANCELLED THE REST OF THE SURGERIES! Shocking. You would think that they would have had enough gowns prepared to do all the surgeries that were scheduled for the day. I mean, what if there was an emergency.
This brought about a new questions for me: How much of the medical conditions here can be blamed an sheer laziness? The more I talk to people here, the more I am learning that the problem is less with finances and more with what to do with that money and the willingness of the population to make changes happen. Guests are so common and they come here with so much money and supplies, but there is little motivation from the local community to fend for themselves. They are almost reliant on the missions that come through to do the work for them.
I also went by the pediatric department to stop in and say hello to the cardiologist (who works in the only air conditioned room in the hospital). When I was here last time, I spent some time with him doing ECHO examinations and he remembered me. He is important to me because if I am to come back here in 2013 to do another follow up project, I will need his help with the examinations. I'll be joining him on Monday to do echoes and I will speak to him about my plans then.
So I left the hospital, in shock, at around 2pm. The heat here really exhausts me. I can hardly drink enough water and I am drinking water all day. In the evening, I went to meet with a woman I had met last time I was here. We met on a bus going to the north of the Island. She is in her 60s or so and has been living on the Island for about 10 years (originally from the US). She has started a organization called Participate Now! and she does little projects around the island. She does not, however, play by the typical NGO rules and therefore does not raise money very well. But she works with the locals and facilitates their self empowerment (she made it clear to me when we first met that she does not believe that one can empower another, rather one must empower themselves). We stayed in touch a little bit since last time I was in Zanzibar and I got back in touch with her again before I came this time to see if there was any small projects that medical students could be a part of. She didn't know of anything personally, but she connected me with a whole bunch of people in the ministry of health and I will be meeting with them after the weekend.
We sat for about 4 hours on her rooftop apartment that has a 360 degree view of the city. It was an amazing little place and we talked about a million different things. She even offered to do my laundry for me if I needed it (which I do...badly).
Afterwards, I was pretty much down for the evening.
Friday: Today I went to a town on the other side of the island called Makunduchi. It is a tiny little town that really has nothing except for a little medical project called the Makunduchi project (you can google it if you are interested). It is a small 30 bed clinic/hospital and that operated within the community. I met a nice doctor from the UK who is there for 6 months doing a bit of everything. I was really interested in their facility because it is much more within the community than the hospital in Stone Town and I think it would be a great hands-on experience for medical students from my school. Plus, there could be some nice opportunity for some good community research projects there.
It was a hassle getting there and involved sitting next to many roads and flagging down many people hoping to get a ride across the island. The distance isn't very far, but getting there took forever. Then it started to rain again, hardcore! African rain. It comes almost without warning and then disappears as quickly. It's mother nature at her finest.
So that is basically what I have done for the last few days. This weekend, I am heading up to the north part of the Island to get some beach and relaxation. I am going with some of my flatmates here (germans). We are renting bungalows on the beach for about $15/night with breakfast included. It's a pretty special place. I will be taking pictures.
Next week will be my last week here. My plans are to spend some time in the maternity ward and hopefully deliver some babies and get some experience with that. I will try to watch some surgeries as well and I may go back to makunduchi later in the week and try to spend a day or two there before heading back to Israel.
I am energized and feeling really good about things here. Not sleep very well, because of the heat, but I feel generally well.
lots of love
Will
Hey Will
ReplyDeleteI hope you are getting my comments. It was great to speak to you yesterday. It sounds like Tanzinya is quite different from Ethiopia. Also sounds very beautiful. I guess the attitude towards health and medicine is a bit different there than in North America. Are you following the news about Libya and Egypt? We miss you here alot. It was great to have you around those 6 months
Thats it for now
love you
mom