We have now passed the two week mark of being in Namaacha with our families! It feels like it has been so much longer. I feel like I am making good progress on the language and we are actually starting to get into things more so training is a lot more interesting now.
We visited a local health center last week for a tour. The hospital was broken up into a bunch of little offices each specified for a different condition, much like how wings of a hospital at home are set up. The thing that shocked me the most was the lack of privacy, which I guess I expected this but seeing it in person is a different story. There was a women who just gave birth to a child laying in a bed right next to other women, some getting ready to give birth, others recovering, all in a room with probably 30 other beds practically right on top of each other. And here we are, a group of 26 Americans who they let just stomp through the entire hospital and gaze at them. Also surprising, in order to be classified as a hospital in Mozambique, a health center here must have a laboratory. I was completely amazed by the simplicity of the lab in this hospital, the deciding factor making this a hospital was a little room with some very low tech equipment and one single microscope, ONE! The room was about a third of the size of an average high school chemistry lab in America. After this visit, I am so excited to finally get in the action and do what I can to help the health system here.
We also learned a lot of little random things like they really have no system for keeping medical records. They only keep them for people with certain conditions and only for the duration of treatment. Mothers are given a card that the doctor fills out for them and their child each visit. Patient records are just left out in the open all over the place it seemed. Women are given a mandatory HIV test when they find out they are pregnant but many of them do not go back to get the results because they are afraid of what they might find. If they do find out they are positive, they do not follow through with treatment because they do not want to tell their husbands they are HIV positive in fear of his response, even though it was likely the husband who got infected by another women and then infected his wife. Keep in mind too that all of their treatment is free of charge, so money is not a factor in their choice. There is a huge shortage in doctors here as well, only one doctor for every 10,000 people.
This all still just blows my mind every time I think about it. I can’t wait to learn more about it and actually start putting myself to work!
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