Another week, another medical camp

Hello hello! Another busy, exciting couple of weeks have come and gone! Time is flying by and I can’t believe I only have a few more weeks living in this city!

This past week I had a welcome break from the routine and got to help out at another medical camp. This camp was led by an organization that primarily provides healthcare and education support to children in Kibera and involved giving medical, dental, and eye screenings to the children they support. We saw around 500 children age 5 to 16 over the course of two crazy busy days. I primarily helped one of the clinicians, Issac, see students, acting as a sort of secondary triage. I fielded the kids’ complaints and handled the kids with minor or no complaints (headache, stomachache, etc.) so that Issac and Dr. Simiyu could focus on the kids with more serious issues. So, my day was filled with giving out paracetamol (acetaminophen) and having the same conversation over and over again. One thing that became very evident over the course of the camp was the truth that, when it comes to kids, they all want what one of them has. We would often have 15-20 kids in a row all complaining of the same thing, whether that be vague stomach pain or chest pains or a sore throat. With this, I got a lot of good practice discerning the urgency of these complaints. Like in medical care in a more regular setting, it is important not to invalidate their complaint while asking the right questions and reading more into the situation to decide the level at which it must be treated. One funny instance of this situation with the kids was when one boy (likely around age 10) had abdominal pain and was given medications and a referral letter to follow up at the clinic. A few minutes later, he came back up to our table with his friend, claiming that the new friend couldn’t speak to us but that he was having the same abdominal pain and needed the same medications. It didn’t take much to figure out that the first boy was trying to (for some reason unknown to me) trick us and get extra medications and the friend he brought up was not a willing participant in his trickery. The second boy, after being asked to point out where his stomach was hurting, gave in and admitted to what they were doing and both boys ran off laughing to themselves.

Other than a few things such as that, the camp days went on smoothly. Two of the biggest health issues that affect children in the area are, as I have spoken about before, rheumatic heart disease (RHD) caused by prolonged and untreated strep infection and h. pylori infection. Both of these issues have hallmark symptoms, chest pain and irregular heart rhythm for RHD and upper GI pain, particularly when hungry, for h. pylori, and we were closely looking out for these things as we saw the kids. Identifying these issues, along with assessing the dental and eye health of the kids, is the goal of camps like this – to assess which kids are starting to show symptoms of issues that could become lifelong if left untreated and help them access such treatment. For this camp, we were not doing laboratory testing but were able to evaluate students who may be at risk for more serious disease and recommend that they come to the clinic for better testing and treatment.

The few days spent helping out at these camps in the past few months have definitely been some of the most rewarding of my time. While there’s not much that can compare to building relationships with the regular patients at the clinic, it has been so special to play a small role in providing free basic medical care to people who may not even have the resources to seek care in a low-cost clinic like ours.

Outside of my work, I recently experienced my first, and only, week being alone in the volunteer house. I definitely enjoyed being alone for a time and having the apartment to myself for a bit, but by the end of the week I was ready to go back to having someone to share the commute with. My free time recently has been focused on visiting the few places I haven’t gotten around to and soaking in time at my favorite spots in the city. I finally took the time to visit a bookstore that has been on my radar the whole time I have lived here. Soma Nami books is a locally owned, small business bookstore that specifically focuses on carrying books by African authors. I definitely took the opportunity to grab a few books by Kenyan authors to mark my time here and expand the diversity of my reading. The book I picked up that I am most excited for is about global health “heroes” throughout Africa and the way that global health work on the African continent has shaped that throughout the whole world. One thing about me is I can spend hours talking about public health initiatives and infectious disease control. I’m excited to use this book as an opportunity to further educate myself on global health in Africa, especially given that most of my life the last six months has been a direct result of such initiatives.

Wow, I must again say that I can’t believe I’m so close to having to leave this city and these people! Two weeks left!