Update from the Field - April 28, 2014

Well, this has certainly been a busy week!

It started with my first “field trip” to Centre Hospitalier Mulamba. It took us about 2 hours to get there from Bukavu. We were going there to speak to the chief of staff there, Dr. Bienvenu, about the needs of the Centre and our hopes to significantly increase the quality of healthcare that they are able to offer to the people there.

This is the Centre

This is their pharmacy

This is the operating room.

"We Care Solar" provided a solar suitcase to the Centre last year through Channel Initiative and we were able to see how the Centre is using it to provide much needed power for the laboratory, surgeries and procedures.

He also showed us the Fetal Doppler the Centre had been provided with through Channel Initiative. The Fetal Doppler allows the doctors at the Centre to better monitor the health of mothers and babies during pregnancy and allows doctors and mothers to hear the heartbeat of the baby.

This is a picture of him explaining to us that the Centre is in urgent need of a proper blood bank refrigerator
so that they can keep adequate quantities of blood on hand for transfusions. As you can see, they basically only have this one regular fridge at the Centre currently that they stuff random packs of blood into (blood donated by the doctors themselves, whenever it is needed...). A real blood fridge will be one of the major needs that I will be focusing on for the next little while.

Here is a picture of him showing us how much of the Cytotec (Misoprostol) they have left at the Centre (this is an essential medicine for health centres as it is a drug used in various maternal health situations/complications). This drug was given to the Centre last year by "Life for African Mothers" through Channel Initiative.

Another huge challenge at the centre is the sheer number of women who come there for help compared to the small number of beds available. The Centre staff try to encourage the local women to come in early during pregnancy so that they can avoid the risk of running into delivery complications en route, but that means that there are dozens of women arriving days or weeks before their delivery date. The Centre simply doesn't have the space to accommodate them all so they used to sleep on the yard outside of the Centre. Recently the Centre received funding to construct this second building in the back in order to house them, but as you can see in this picture [Since the original post, I have removed this picture at the request of my supervisor], they have no beds so the women sit on the concrete all day or on one of the old mattresses while they wait for their delivery. As such, finding beds and bedding is another huge need I am working on.


The road on the way to the centre and back was pretty…“varied”. I tried to get some shots of the terrain, but its really hard to get an accurate picture of what it was like.

At a couple of points we stopped and some of the folks in our vehicle took advantage of the “drive-through” markets. Here you can see an onion transaction being negotiated from the front passenger seat.

Later on this week we also had a chance to visit colleagues over at “City of Joy”/“Cite de la Joie” which is a community for women survivors of gender violence in Bukavu. Here is a picture of their beautiful facility. [Since the original post, I have removed these 2 pictures at the request of my supervisor]

Out back they also raise chickens. The City raises/harvests all the food it needs to run and provide for the women staying there. Dominique took the second picture of me in front of these chickens right before the security guard arrived to remind us brusquely that no pictures were allowed...

Near the end of the week we were able to catch the end of one of the morning worship meetings at the Panzi Hospital. I have never caught any of what is being said at the meeting because I do not speak Swahili, but I love the singing at the end – especially when I can recognize some of the tunes of the old familiar English hymns (translated to Swahili with beautiful Congolese harmonics of course!)

And the week ended with a meeting at Maison Dorcas where we were able to collaborate with several representatives of various programs and services at Panzi Hospital to try and make the “one-stop centre” a reality in Mulamba and elsewhere in South Kivu in the future (unforunately, the meeting got a little heated at times -- there's a lot of strong personalities in this group)

[Since the original post, I have removed these 2 pictures at the request of my supervisor]

Well, that is about it for this past week. I will end off with a picture of beautiful Bukavu where we live and work.

I have another post that I'd like to put up more about my after-work-hours life here. Hopefully by the end of this week!

Until then!