Today was my first full day at the hospital. I am going to spend a couple of days learning the differen departments of the hospital, observing what they do and how they tie in together. Then I will start in the accounting department. One of my first jobs will be to set up the new "peanut butter" venture. They are starting a program that is making peanut butter with vitamin additives. The peanut butter will be used to fight the child malnutrition that is a serious problem - particularly in the villages.
We arrived at work at 8:00 to 250 people already waiting to get in for thier appointments, etc. By 11:00 they had signed in 500 people. I spent the morning working and learning in "records" with shelf after shelf of patient files - the ones that were green files were (HIV) positives and the ones in pink were there for another medical reason. the green files were about 4 to 1 to the pink files. It was a madhouse as they tried to serve all those people! Both waiting rooms were full and people were filling the walkways outside. I thought that most of the children were there with thier parents - but I was told that many of the kids were there because they were positives. It broke my heart. There are five doctors on staff to deal with all those patients. Many of them are "check-up's" on existing paients - but they had 147 new patients today.
After records I came home for lunch (we have both a driver and a cook) then back to Faith Alive to work in the pharmacy. The drug storage space was either bins on the floor or shelves made of wood and cinder blocks. Again I was blown away by he number of people they were serving. They fill 500 prescriptions a day - unfortunately they are so busy they don't really have any time to consult with thier patients. The situation is further complicated because they have to log all of those prescriptions into a journal by hand because they do not have enough computers to be able to computerize the process.
Atg 6:00 I was pulled out of pharmacy and went to help Dr. Chris as he saw his patients. He lets me be very interactive with all of the patients. He saw one patient - a "positive" he had put on HIV drugs awhile back. She had started experiencing weakness in her legs and some other things - so she went to another "doctor" The doctor pushed on her stomach a few times and told her that she hade hepatitis and then on the medical referral wrote cancer of the liver. He then gave her some ineffective drugs and charged her $600 (american). Dr. Chris was livid - because she was hustled - big time and as a widow with a child - she could not afford the loss of that money. The symptoms she had were sideeffects from the HIV drugs. Dr. Chris says that this type of medical fraud is rampant in Nigeria. Then he did a couple of "check-up's" that are gaining weight and thriving with the help of the drugs.& nbsp; One woman has been positive for three years. Without the drugs - she would have died by now. Each of the patients are counselled and prayed with - that was my main job.
There is an attorney on staff at Faith Alive whose job is sort of like a legal aid attorney. He works with widows whose husbands have died from AIDS and the husband's family has kicked her and the children out of the home and taken possession of everything. Traditionally there is not much that she is able to do to stop them but this attorney is starting to have limited success in the courts in getting the possessions back for the wife.
Although Northern Nigeria is predominately Muslim - in Jos it is about 50/50 with Christianity. Up until 5:30 this morning I thought that was pretty cool - but at that time the street preacher next door started preaching over his very loud loudspeaker. He kept shouting that there was a heaven and a hell - there was a heaven and a hell. I briefly considered going out on my balcony and shouting if he didn't shut up I was going to teach him about hell - but at the last second the sane part of my mind prevailed.
The children (adults too) like to touch my hair to see if it is real. They seem to think that I am wearing a wig. I am adapting to only having electricity for a couple of hours a day - and to taking showers by pouring buckets of water over my head.
Well, I have blathered on enough - and yet have only begun to scratch the surface of this life.
Talk to all of you soon!
Valerie