The last two weeks of my service learning experience have been a delight to witness.
There were other seven volunteer Physicians from the USA also providing healthcare at my service learning site. Their presence eased the working pressure and the heavy work load at BMC which has been the order of the day due to inadequate long term or permanent Physicians.
They left during my last week and the healthcare center resumed its working congestion with much working pressure as a consequence of many awaiting patients in long queues to be seen by the very few doctors available.
Some of the patients have travelled a distance of more than 300km to see a doctor. If such patients could not be seen by a Physician on their arrival day, they had no other choice than to sleep overnight on the floor of the hospital corridors to be seen the next day.
Among these patients was a patient with acute abdominal obstruction with visible peristalsis secondary to gastric carcinoma. The patient vomits everything she eats.
The sight of the patients lying on the floor with their illness without the opportunity to be attended to was a motivation for me to work tirelessly to help in alleviating such occurrences.
Putting smiles on the faces of these people in providing healthcare to them is a fulfillment one can experience.
Coupled with this, an opportunity to care for many forgotten people is also a chance to improve on your professional skills in a setting where you have to do everything by yourself including taking X ray for your patients because there is no radiologist or x ray technician to do that.
I also had a time to work at the public health department during my last few days.
I worked with the immunization team and attended to pregnant women for their antenatal care visits. I was vaccinating newborns, infants and pregnant women and also distributed treated mosquito nests to the pregnant women.
My greatest motivation is that, serving the forgotten people is an opportunity to develop one’s innovative skills to come out with a cost effective healthcare interventions.