Third Caravan

This morning there were two huge hornbills flying outside our dorm. While observing them, we noticed a covered stretcher being carried out of the hospital. All the bearers were wearing masks and gloves...someone had died during the night.

Today we were at Mathew's parish. Mathew is one of our translators who is helping with crowd control yesterday. We are down two people today-one is under the weather and Julia has been invited to attend general surgery today. She will be observing a goiter removal, breast removal (due to cancer), and removal of large facial tumour. This is something that probably would never be allowed in Canada. Everyone here is envious of Julia's opportunity, however we look forward to the pictures. In her report to us later that day she mentioned that the anesthesiologist hand pumps the air for the patient. Today's surgeries meant 6 hours of manual pumping. Crazy!

Front of church where patients were waiting

The line of patients that were waiting for us wasn't that huge (maybe 30-40 people tops). We were very surprised since yesterday was so huge.

We couldn't set up triage inside the church so we set up on the front step. A school is run out of the church so there were tons of tables and chairs to use. Six medical stations and the single opthomology station were set up in the biggest classroom. Lise had mentioned that the people in this community tend be healthier than many of the others that we will visit, so the need for our services may not be as dire. CACHA really has no say in where we go as this is an outreach program of Kilema Hospital so we go were sister Clarissa want us.


The need for opthomologists (and dentists) on these missions is dire. The line for "macho" (eyes) is usually long and the wait is also long. One logistic person is usually paired up with the optomologist- their main job is to dispense the prescribed medicine (usually eye drops) and to instruct the patient on how to administer it. Since most of the volunteers can't speak Swahili, we have a couple of lines of Swahili that we have memorized.

There is little running to do between stations so the walkies weren't needed. A couple of our translators found them in our logistics bins and were playing around with them all day. I think that they had never used walkies before and were having a blast. Even Mathew was using them for a while. We are considering leaving them in Africa.

Some of the cases we saw today...lots of unusual blood pressures, a man who chopped his knee open with machete and lots of skins rashes. If a procedure can't be done during caravan the patient is always referred to Kilema Hospital. The simple fact that they are referred by CACHA means that they do not need to pay for treatment at the hospital.

Every day we have people who shake our hand telling us how thankful they are that we are there to help them.

Total patients seen: 350
HIV Positive:5