Wednesday 378!
Wednesday 378!!!!
It was an exhausting day. We arrived at the center in the morning to a long line up of moms and babies. We closed the gates before 10 am and told those who we could not let in to return on Friday. In the end, we had let in 378 people. We worked as efficiently as possible to get people seen and we had some interesting cases. We don’t have our stats for the day with respect to the number of HIV tests and counseling we did. We seemed to have fewer positives but it may be because we had so many more people. We had a few heartbreakers though with a ‘bibi’ (grandma) coming with three young children. There were twin boys and a girl. They were so cuddly and huggable and crawled all over Wendy Anderson and I for half an hour while we saw them and she tested them. Unfortunately one of the twins was positive. The others, thankfully, negative. The bibi then told us that the mother of the boys was dying of AIDS and that several of her other children had already died. She had 7 orphaned grandchildren. We invited her to come back to the center for some extra support when the caravan was over.
The mosquito nets have been highly cherished items. Thanks to our donors who made the nets possible….you know who you are. We have almost run out and will purchase more tomorrow. Our visit with each client is just a few moments to counsel them on health issues and give out some meds (everyone gets de-wormed…anemia and malnutrition are closely related to the presence of worms here and worms are common..en masse de-worming is one of the useful public health initiatives we can provide). The nets however, are a lasting preventative measure to prevent malaria in young children and pregnant women, the two groups who are most likely to have severe disease and die.
Jenn’s children, Sid and Adam brought a thousand toothbrushes donated by Madeleine de Roybon school and Empire Life Financial and the Emergency department at Kingston General Hospital. They are a huge hit…the kids and adults will brush if they have one!
On a sad note, one of our many translators asked to be tested yesterday at the end of the day for HIV. She is a young woman who is aspiring to be a teacher. She is positive, and we are devastated…..but, we vow to support her through this and she will hopefully turn to Agnes or Sekunda, two of our women’s center employees, who are living productively with HIV.
It was an exhausting day. We arrived at the center in the morning to a long line up of moms and babies. We closed the gates before 10 am and told those who we could not let in to return on Friday. In the end, we had let in 378 people. We worked as efficiently as possible to get people seen and we had some interesting cases. We don’t have our stats for the day with respect to the number of HIV tests and counseling we did. We seemed to have fewer positives but it may be because we had so many more people. We had a few heartbreakers though with a ‘bibi’ (grandma) coming with three young children. There were twin boys and a girl. They were so cuddly and huggable and crawled all over Wendy Anderson and I for half an hour while we saw them and she tested them. Unfortunately one of the twins was positive. The others, thankfully, negative. The bibi then told us that the mother of the boys was dying of AIDS and that several of her other children had already died. She had 7 orphaned grandchildren. We invited her to come back to the center for some extra support when the caravan was over.
The mosquito nets have been highly cherished items. Thanks to our donors who made the nets possible….you know who you are. We have almost run out and will purchase more tomorrow. Our visit with each client is just a few moments to counsel them on health issues and give out some meds (everyone gets de-wormed…anemia and malnutrition are closely related to the presence of worms here and worms are common..en masse de-worming is one of the useful public health initiatives we can provide). The nets however, are a lasting preventative measure to prevent malaria in young children and pregnant women, the two groups who are most likely to have severe disease and die.
Jenn’s children, Sid and Adam brought a thousand toothbrushes donated by Madeleine de Roybon school and Empire Life Financial and the Emergency department at Kingston General Hospital. They are a huge hit…the kids and adults will brush if they have one!
On a sad note, one of our many translators asked to be tested yesterday at the end of the day for HIV. She is a young woman who is aspiring to be a teacher. She is positive, and we are devastated…..but, we vow to support her through this and she will hopefully turn to Agnes or Sekunda, two of our women’s center employees, who are living productively with HIV.
posted by karenandroman at 9:37 AM
1 Comments:
As usual, I am in tears while reading your most recent entries. My heart is full with pride to know I have such intrepid friends as you all. Malinga looks just awesome in this most recent picture, and Hadleigh was jiggling with excitement. She wants to show him all around Universal Studios, and was very indignant that I suggested we all wanted to go to Disney with him first! She said: "he is MY age, and I KNOW he will like Universal better, because in Africa they like Spiderman better than Princesses!!". Love, Al.
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