Friday, July 23, 2010

Fasin village and health center!

Last week I spent again on obs and gynae but didn't manage to update my blog.

This week has been amazing. I have spent it in a rural village called Fasin, working in the community health center there. The village is what you would imagine an African farming village to be - no electricity or water, very basic style of living, mud huts etc! I lived in my guide's hut (a man called Meshack who has links with Work the World) which was again basic but definitely an experience! Had a couple of run ins with nasty very large spiders.. All his family live right nearby so I got to know a few of them, like his very lovely and jolly father called Prince, and his sister Vaida who cooked for me, and many of the children running around and playing. I have been eating fruit and rice basically all week so it was very nice to get back to the main house in Takoradi this afternoon and have 'normal' food and a good old cup of tea!

The health center is the biggest in the area, but when i say biggest it is still pretty small, with 3 rooms and 6 lovely staff, 3 of which are community health nurses and 3 'assistants'. The community nurses here have only 2 years training (as opposed to the hospital nurses who have 3 years) so are technically as qualified as me, yet their job is basically the same as a GP doctor back in the UK (who would have about 10 years training)...it is quite scary how much responsibility they have for how little trained they are! They see all the patients, diagnose, treat and prescribe everything, and there are no doctors around so if a person is ever too ill for them they send them off in a taxi to Dixcove Hospital about 30 mins away. On Monday my first day I felt quite out of my depth as they expected me to know a LOT more than I do and were asking me to examine and diagnose every patient which is a responsibility of course I have never had and it was a little scary! But I got into the swing of it and learnt how they do ante natal checks (they see a lot of pregnant women at the clinic), did a lot of injections and vaccinations, and generally saw a wide variety of things, including lots of malaria, very sick babies and old people, a few horrible wounds and lots of pregnant women who have had millions of children already. A lot of children come to the clinic too and they ALL get diagnosed with malaria, no matter what symptoms the mother is saying the child has. They also all get a lot of drugs prescribed, a lot of which are completely unnecessary and I did question this, but I have been told this is simply what all community clinics 'do', which is frustrating for me as I know this isn't right. For instance most patients get prescribed antibiotics when in most cases they won't need it, which just makes resistance to the drugs higher which is a big problem here. However despite these differences in health care to the UK I learnt so much this week and was definitely an experience.

My highlight of the week was delivering a baby on Tuesday! I have seen a couple in the UK and here too but not delivered one myself before...the nurse handed me an apron and gloves and said 'you do it, i will help'! It was such a responsibility playing midwife and slightly terrifying but i felt confident and was such a good experience. The facilities and resources at the clinic are somewhat sparse and even less than Effia Nwkanta hospital where I have been based, but maneagable. My other highlight was doing 'outreach' on Thursday morning, where me and one of the nurses went to the even more rural local areas and did vaccinations on the new born babies (the first of which was the baby I had delivered on Tuesday!)

Yesterday I met the village chief and the village elders which was a little scary, and on Wednesday I met the chief's chief, an older (slightly gangster!) man already with 2 wives (polygamy is very common here) and got another marriage proposal from him, he was being deadly serious! It was such a good week and really glad I did it. The people in the village were so friendly and so curious why a white person was there, I felt (uncomfortably) a bit like a celebrity at times as whenever I walked anywhere I would get stares and people saying 'hello, welcome' and children running after me calling their friends and shouting 'obruni!' (white person) which sometimes got a little tiring but was cute all the same! Was really nice seeing other white faces today when I got back to the house and having a normal conversation instead of restricted English (and having a flushing toilet and electricity again!).

Anyways sorry I have written an essay - so much to say for this week though! I get back to the UK on Wednesday 28th (yay not long) and am really looking forward to coming home now.

Lots of love from Ella xx

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