Arriving in Mwanza, first day in the Clinic
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2005
1
4
11
Trip End
Dec 02, 2005
Mwanza,
Tanzania
Friday, October 7, 2005
Just finished my first day at the Clinic at Sekou Torre Regional Hospital in Mwanza. We arrived yesterday, a colleague of mine from Dar to show me around town and introduce me. The catchment region is about 3 million citizens. The local staff and docs are being lovely, but I guess they figure they're getting free help for 2 months, so better treat him right. My new colleague, Dr. Butamanya, is delightful, but I'm sure he would have appreciated me not pronouncing one of his patients terminal before he decided to operate to save her. He works 12 hour days, took no lunch, so I'm gonna have to keep my wits about me to not get caught up in the insanity. He's a good guy, but only been in HIV care about a year, and makes US$100 per month. Not much by anyone's standards, but a lot more than the average Tanzanian. They have few drugs, no paper for notes, can't print lab slips because no ink, but the people are delightful and do what they can with little or no resources. Way poorer facility in some ways than the project in Arua I was in last year. MSF provided lots of meds to Arua hospital, but there's no MSF project here. Columbia has set up a nice lab, but unfortunately there's not enough staff to run it properly.
Oh, and I'm wondering if Columbia would have sent me had they known that NOONE speaks English, except the doctors. Not a single patient I saw today spoke a word. They allspeak Swahili, so I may take an evening class to learn it. There's another hospital in town, which is owned by the Catholic church, which is also nice, except for the lab, and we're doing some work there also.
Turns out I'm the first HIV consultant Columbia has had in Tanzania, for treatment & care matters. I think they would have preferred to keep me in Dar, but the hospital is a medical school and has lots of donors, funding and political issues involved with it.
My guess is I'll be rotating amongst a number of facilities; unless of course I bury too many patients prematurely. Kinna embarrassed myself twice today, but, oh well, its been awhile since I practiced.
Tata for now.
Oh, no clothes or camera yet.
