Outreach day

Every Friday and Sunday, the nurses from Kyenda clinic will go to an outreach site for a “Family Health Day”. They coordinate the visits with the help of the religious leaders in the community, so Fridays are targeted at the Muslims in the villages, and Sundays are targeted at the Christians. They rotate through four different sites, visiting them in turn, so that each site receives a Friday/Sunday visit about once a month. Amanda and I decided to go along with them this time, just to see what exactly entails a “Family Health Day”. The nurses sent me and Amanda with some non-perishable supplies first on a boda boda, and then the boda went back to the clinic to pick up the two nurses from Kyenda.

When Amanda and I first arrived, there was quite a bit of commotion in the village. Not many foreigners come to visit them deep in the village. All the children ran out to greet us. And a really drunk man came to talk to us. When everything had quieted down a little, Amanda and I took out our reading materials and started to read while awaiting the arrival of the nurses.

When the nurses finally arrived, they were very annoyed that there were no patients waiting for them. “You didn’t tell us you were coming,” one of the villagers told us. “If we had known, we would’ve told everyone to come and wait for you.” The nurses sighed in exasperation. “We come here every month. Do we have to tell you every month?” And so we started to set up our little clinic area under the shade of a giant tree. Slowly, people started trickling into our clinic area. Mothers brought their children to update their immunizations – BCG, DTP, Measles, and Polio. We also saw some pregnant mothers, and gave them folic acid and tetanus boosters. More and more people came, as word of our presence spread through the whole village. A throng of people lined up to have their blood pressures taken, which kept Amanda busy all day. Many people came, even healthy young lads, to get their BPs taken. “You don’t have high blood pressure,” Amanda remarked to one of the young men, who looked fit as a bull. “You just want your blood pressure taken by a muzungu.” The young man smiled sheepishly.

By the end of the day, there were still many people to be seen, but we had to pack up and leave. We told everyone to come back on Sunday, when we would return. It was quite an interesting experience. These visits were filled with inefficiencies (we wasted at least 2 hours just waiting for patients to arrive), but they worked. At the end of the day, these visits ensured that most of the children in the villages received their immunizations, that pregnant mothers received multivitamins and some antenatal care, and that villagers with hypertension received referrals to the clinics in town. These villagers could not go and seek out healthcare, so we bring healthcare out to them.