Sunday, January 24, 2010

Emergency Meal Kit

dried soup mix
Each kit holds an immediate food supply of lentils, oil and sorghum to feed men, women and children in the aftermath of civil war and genocide in Darfur and southern Sudan. Your gift provides 3 families with food for one month, ensuring the survival and strength to rebuild their lives in traumatic times.
$45.00 » Give Today!

Mobile Health Clinics

medical clinic
As a follow-up program to a freshly dug water well, these clinics provide basic medical and dental care to hundreds of African men, women and children in need. Your gift provides vital vaccinations,antibiotics, pre-natal vitamins, and sanitation training to 10 people in need.
$55.00 » Give Today!

Supply Clean Water to 3 People for Life

clean water
In many of Africa’s poorest communities, families only have access to water in stagnant ponds or hand dug wells. Bacteria and water-borne disease cause illness and death. With just $30 you can help build a new water well and provide the transforming gift of a lifetime of clean water to 3 people.

Medical Clinic inside of CVS?

Posted in News on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 5:57 pm by staff photographer Steve Gengler
0718clinic.jpgSince March the CVS on Lincoln Ave in Newtown Borough has opened up a small medical clinic, named the Minute Clinic, which operates on a walk-up basis and has been offering basic medical care such as free blood pressure screenings or diagnosing common family illnesses.  Here Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner Galina Kshik stands in front of the clinic in the Newtown CVS.  Keep an I out for a Courier Times story next week on these types of clinics and the positive and negative reactions they have been getting in the community.
Hi everyone, sorry this firsr entry has taken so long but the internet here is not the best. For anyone who doesn't know the two of us set off for Tanzania 2 weeks ago. The plan was to work in Northern Tanzania with an american cardiac anesthesiologist turned bush doctor - Frank Artress. He came to Tanzania 5 years ago and set up FAME(foundation for african medicine and education), check out his website www.fameafrica.org. A relative night of luxury in arusha, being mobbed at the bus station and one broken down bus later we arrived in Karatu. It's a small town made up of one road made of tarmac a few scruffy shops and not much else. Its the end of the dry season here so everything is covered in this thick red dust. We keep thinking we have amazing tans until we shower and the dust/tan all washes away!
The mobile medical clinic team
The mobile medical clinic team

The day after we arrived in Karatu we were chucked right in a the deep end and set off on the mobile medical clinic. There were twenty of us all together, mostly tanzanians who work with Dr Frank. The had two other practising doctors with us - Ivan who is a medical officer (similar to a nursing practioner in the UK) and Dr Mugass a medical student. There was also Siana a nurse and acting pharmacist, josephat our lab technician and Deana and Marie who were occupational therapists from the US who were working at a local orphanage. The mobile clinic was the first of 24 monthly clinics which were planned for the area of Mon'gola, in particular the village of Laganghereri. FAME had recieved a grant from the Netherland malaria no more trust to fund the project. Three hours on the red bumpy roads we arrived in Laganghereri and the locals were waiting. Some people had walked for hours or even days to get to the clinic as the word had spread that there was free health care available. We set up in some school buildings and got through as many patients as we could. In total we manage to see around 500 people in 4 days.

I worked with Mary, FAME's HIV outreach co-ordinator and expert translator. It took a while for me to find my feet, when I asked a patient what the problem was in my best swahili Mary would reply they have pain in their head, ears, chest, stomach and backbone, as well as some diarrhoea and coughing up a bit of blood Chilling on the mobile clinic
Chilling on the mobile clinic
! She was brilliant at helping me figure out the main problems and explaining the diagnosis. Most of the patients were from the local tribes and had only previously seen a traditional healer/witch doctor. Some had scars on their faces and bodies - the aftermath of traditional healing. Being the only female doctor the majority of patients I saw were young women with likely STI's and pelvic infammatory disease. Gynaecology isn't my best subject but it was just a case of going by symptoms and whipping the patient into the back of the bus for a quick injection and handing out a few condoms. We saw loads of Malaria as no one uses mosquito nets, and brucellosis - from slaughtering cattle and the unpasteurised milk. The mind set was just to do the best we could, pick out the sick patients, do a bit of health education and de-worm everyone! We came back to Karatu knackered, dusty and completely sick of rice and beans. All in all a pretty amazing week.

Sye

    Right, Kirsty's filled you in on the first part of our wee trip so i'll try not repeat the details or bore/annoy you with countless teary-eyed cliches but let me jsut say this: I've been lucky enough to have done some travelling in my time and while Africa was somewhere I definitely wanted to visit and travel in at some point, it was never somewhere I was hugely drawn to or knew that much about The journey to Mang'ola
The journey to Mang'ola
. I'm not sure of any particular reason, but it was just a bit further down my list. Sitting writing this after only a few weeks i realise that was a big mistake. I've never had three weeks like this before - it's already been absolute quality.
    The mobile clinic was amazing - happy, sad, rewarding and at times frustrating. The people here just get on with things - they're tough as fuck. There was the woman who walked several hours with 4 small kids strapped to her and as it turned out had malaria, a chest infection and an STD that she'd had for 3 years and which gave her constant pain but did she complain? no, just got on with it. Another guy who was really sick had become paralysed from the waist down 2 years ago and had been nursed all that time on the floor of his tiny mud hut by his wife on her own. He had some of the worst pressure sores i've seen on his hip and back - nearly down to the bone and infected. He barely flinched when we had to do a bush style wound debridement on him with no anaesthetic and very little pain killer to limit the infection. He had HIV and his paralysis was most likely due to an infection he picked up and couldn't fight off. It turned out his wife was sick too and also had HIV - we had to tell her, it was so difficult but she was incredibly brave, her attitude was that this was just how it was and she just wanted to make sure her family would be OK - very humbling. There was a fair bit of gutting stuff like that that we couldn't do that much about like people with undiagnosed cancers but there was also some great medicine where people had been miserable for ages with things that for us are easily to treat and when you got them sorted out it was really rewarding - thats what it's all about Laganghereri
Laganghereri
.
    The setting for all this, despite much of the area being very run down, was pretty stunning too. I've not seen scenery like it anywhere i've been before, there's something striking about how red the earth is and how different it is depending how close to the water you are, you can see it change in front of your eyes over relatively short distances. Some of it's very green which surprised me - i thought of it as dry and barren (don't get me wrong a lot of it is - and very dusty) but theres patches of thick rainforest, savannah grassland and marshy green bits by the water teaming with wildlife - beautiful.
   Right that's enough of that. To carry on where Kirsty left off, after the mobile clinic we spent the week back at the clinic base in Karatu. As they'd told us before we arrived they've got the place pretty well staffed with Tanzanian doctors and don't have a massive patient load yet so there weren't a huge number of cases for us to see. As i'd said to them i liked orthopaedics, i was considered an expert and was consulted on all the joint pains and did the odd steroid injection and Kirsty was consulted on the medical stuff. When we weren't seeing patients there was a lot of behind the scenes stuff to get on with because they're planning to build a 14 bed hospital on the site with theatres for major and minor surgery. We helped with the some of the aspects of planning it and the organisation of the clinic itself Patients waiting to be seen
Patients waiting to be seen
. It was pretty good cos it's not the kind of stuff you generally think much about as a doctor but it was interesting to see how they deal with the problem of being in such a remote area and getting the supplies they need, things that aren't an issue at home.
   While in Karatu we stayed with the volunteer coordinator for the clinic, Caroline, who's a very switched on very organised German girl who likes a bit of a drink. Her place had a pub in the compound literally 50 feet from the door: 1 pound beers - Joy! Most, if not all nights were spent there so it was a good laugh.
   We arranged a couple of wee trips during the week too. The first was to visit a hunter gatherer tribe that live in the bush called the Hadzabe. These guys are mental, they're really excitable and talk in a fairly in your face language that has clicks in it (bit like Marvin from southpark) it sounds like they're always raging but they're really smiley and friendly. When we went to see them they were going out hunting and we went with them - brilliant!. They gave us all bows and arrows and ran out into the scub with us following. They manage to pick off little birds with their arrows which they then strap to their belts/ loincloths and then every so often they'd stop, light a fire and cook them up (cook is a loose term: they hold them over the fire for a minute or so then munch them - bones, heads and all, no wastage) Trying to firgure out what the hell is wrong
Trying to firgure out what the hell is wrong
. They also had a bit of a penchant for weed and would all have a wee smoke out of a stone pipe before they went out hunting - i think they reckoned it made them one with nature or somthing. Great day.
   The next trip was out on safari in the Ngorongoro Crater which apparently has the highest concentration of wildlife in it of any of the African wildlife parks. This Place was incredible, it's a volcanic crater 17km across filled with animals. You drive up to the top of the rim through dense rainforest then down the other side into the crater itself. From the top of the rim there an incredible view down to the grassland below and you can see that its perfectly circular completly enclosed by what looks like a massive wall all the way round. When we got in it started off pretty slow and we saw zebras and wildebeast, which is all well and good but the novelty soon wears off and you want the lions and elephants. I was not to be dissapointed - pretty soon they all started coming out the woodwork, lions coming within 4 or 5 feet of the car, elephants bathing, hippos chilling, water buffalo etc all in immense numbers everywhere you looked. Couldn't have imagined seeing that much - highly recommended.
    While the week at the clinic was a bit lighter on hardcore medicine compared to the one before it was still definitely worthwhile. The team there are a pretty special lot, they work for a fraction of the wage of their opposite numbers in the uk but theres no slacking and no bitching and moaning like you get so much at home, everyones always got a smile on. Frank and Susan especially are two of the nicest folk you'll meet and have always got a joke or a story no matter how busy they are. Come the end of the week though we were starting to get itchy feet and were ready to get on with the next leg of the trip.

Medical Care & Clinic

When you have a health problem, it's only natural to want it resolved quickly with minimal stress and uncertainty. With our onsite 5* medical clinic you can do something about it right now, and get on with getting back to normal life. In case of a medical emergency every apartment and bungalow is connected to the on-site medical clinic, which provides 24 hour front-line care for Henley Village residents, including our own on-site ambulance.
Our focus is on your peace of mind, both now and in the future. Our on-site medical clinic assures that your needs are always catered for.

Your medical history is recorded at the medical clinic where our team of bi-lingual nurses, therapists and doctors can attend to all types of medical needs.

Stories from the Gordhim Medical Clinic

The DOR (Diocese of Rumbeck) Medical Clinic in Gordhim serves a large area in Aweil East country - people will walk from miles around to access the medical services provided here. In January 2008, Janet Tufts (Director of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame), along with other CASS volunteers, delivered much needed medicines and physician's travel packs donated by Health Partners International. The need for medicine is overwhelming - when the proper medication is not available, it means that inferior medicines must be substituted, or the patients must try to find and purchase the medicines themselves from the local markets. Following are three stories from Janet Tufts of actual patients, and how they benefited from the supplies.
Ahok and her baby, Dend
Ahok walked over three hours to Gordhim with her 10-month old baby boy Dend. Dend arrived at the clinic on January 16, 2008 malnourished and dehydrated. He had been sick since June 2007. The doctor and nurses thought Dend was anemic and decided to take him and his mother to the closest hospital in Aweil (45 km away) where they were hoping he could get a blood transfusion. The hospital was unable to help Dend.
The next day, back at the Gordhim Medical Clinic, Dend went into crisis. The doctor (Sylvia from Slovakia) prescribed Cetril which had just arrived from Health Partners the previous day. Unfortunately, Dend was unable to keep the medication down - he was constantly throwing up.
Sylvia and the nurse (Harriet from Uganda) agreed that Dend needed IV. Getting IV into little Dend's hand was a huge challenge for Sylvia who had only been in Gordhim for one week and had received only minimal training on caring for malnourished children. The latex gloves provided by Health Partners came in handy during this procedure.

The DOR Medical Clinic
Working with a severely dehydrated infant
Poor little Dend suffered through two attempts with the IV - one in each hand. It was clearly very painful for him but he was unable to shed tears due to his dehydration. His cries were mere whimpers as he had not an ounce of energy.
The only �tool� the health care professionals had to comfort their little patient was one of the dolls from Health Partners. It provided a glimpse of hope and calmness amidst the commotion and uncertainty of this medical crisis. Thankfully, Dend survived the ordeal.
Mary Adut
Mary was one of approximately 100 pregnant women who arrived at the prenatal clinic in Gordhim on Thursday, January 17, 2008. The prenatal clinic is open every day but on Thursdays they offer educational sessions which draws larger crowds. Mary waited over three hours in the hot sun to be seen by the nurse. The nurse's name was Harriet; she was from Uganda and had been at the Gordhim Medical Clinic for six months.
Mary was roughly 29 years old and 30 weeks pregnant. She was complaining of a productive cough that had been lingering for over two weeks. The ideal medication for Mary's symptoms was amoxicillin.
Thanks to the arrival of amoxicillin from Health Partners the previous day, Harriet was able to provide Mary with a dosage right then and there. Otherwise, Harriet would have had to give her a prescription for amoxicillin and send her to the market (which she may not have had money for) or give her a less-effective medication (i.e. erythromycin).
Aweng, and her baby, Achien
Aweng walked a half hour with her baby, Achien, to the Gordhim Medical Clinic on January 17, 2008. A half hour is not far compared to the distance that most people travel to this clinic. It is the only one for miles around and has a good reputation.
Achien was six months old and her symptoms were diarrhea and a cough - exactly what amoxicillin is perfect for. If it weren't for the arrival of this product from Health Partners the day before, the doctor (Sylvia from Slovakia) would have had to prescribe a lesser-quality drug (i.e. cloxacillin).
Sylvia was overjoyed with the amoxicillin from Health Partners for two reasons: 1) the quality of the medication is much better than what they normally get from Kenya; and 2) they are desperately in need of it in powder/syrup form for children. Sylvia commented that she would have to ration the amoxicillin as it is the most needed medication.
Syvia was pleased to be able to give Achien one of the handcrafted dolls from Health Partners. The language barrier makes it difficult for the doctor to create a bond with her young patients and the dolls help to make a connection - and bring a smile.
BY LEANNE SMITH
The Livingston Community News
Donna Briggs gets sinus infections every year, and the one she had earlier this winter was typical with its congestion, sniffling and discomfort.
The difference this time was that she didn't have to just suffer through it.
Briggs, a hairdresser from Whitmore Lake, has no medical insurance, but that doesn't matter to the free nondenominational, faith-based Mission Medical Clinic. She's the kind of patient the volunteer health professionals there want to help.
"This is wonderful," Briggs said during her January visit. "Hopefully, I'll get better faster."

Nurse practitioner Laura Goldman, right, examines Donna Briggs, of Whitmore Lake, at the free Mission Medical Clinic. The clinic, started by Goldman and her husband Mitchell, an emergency room doctor, sees patients free on Saturdays at the Putnam Township Fire Hall, 1066 E. M-36, Pinckney.
Mission Medical Clinic has been packed since it opened Dec. 1 in the lower-level training room of the Putnam Township Fire Hall on M-36 in Pinckney. It serves uninsured patients age 18-64 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday. Appointments are recommended.
The clinic was founded by Mitchell and Laura Goldman, of Hamburg Township. He's an emergency room physician, and she's a family nurse practitioner and former member of the University of Michigan Survival Flight team. They said a medical mission trip to India a year ago opened their eyes to how many people here are suffering because they have no medical insurance.
"There are an estimated 11,000 uninsured adults in Livingston County alone," Mitchell Goldman said. "Unfortunately, the need is growing as people get laid off or have their medical benefits cut. These are rough times."
The popularity of the clinic was expected, but still startling, the Goldmans said.
"A lot of people have the perception that uninsured people are on the rough edge of society," Mitchell Goldman said. "That's not true. They are your friends and neighbors."
Many using the clinic work part-time jobs that don't offer benefits, the volunteers said.
"They really are the working poor," said Karen Adams, of Hamburg Township, a retired nurse and clinic volunteer. "One person was working three part-time jobs and none of them provided health insurance."
The clinic treats chronic health issues, including high blood pressure, asthma and diabetes, as well as providing urgent care for colds, flu, sore throats and minor burns, cuts and sprains.
Casey Workman, a paramedic at Oakwood Annapolis Hospital in Wayne County, prepares an examination area in the kitchen of the Putnam Township Fire Hall.
"It's a godsend," said Mary Clickner, of Cohoctah Township, who came to the clinic in January with bronchitis. "It would be nice if there were more places like this in the county, but I'm just thankful this one is here."
Practicing and retired medical professionals, as well as community members who do administrative tasks, volunteer at the clinic. All are covered by malpractice and general liability insurance, which costs the clinic about $22,000 a year and is the biggest drain on its donated funds, Mitchell Goldman said.
The Shalom Lutheran Church Mission Possible Group, The Mission Church, the Christian House of Prayer and businesses, including National City Bank, Lakeland Carpet, Pinckney Auto Wash, Busch's supermarket, Everything Battery and Pinckney's Rite Aid drug store, are helping, but more donations are needed, the Goldmans said.
More doctors, dentists and midlevel practitioners, such as physicians assistants and nurse practitioners, also are needed so the clinic can serve more patients, Laura Goldman said.
"We're taking care of as many people as we possibly can with who we have," she said. "The more support we get, the more we can offer patients and stay in business. I believe this clinic will go on. I don't see how we could stop now."
Free clinic
The Mission Medical Clinic is a free non-denominational faith-based health clinic for uninsured adults age 18-64. It's open 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays in the lower-level training room of the Putnam Township Fire Hall, 1066 E. M-36, Pinckney. Appointments are recommended.

























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In February 2004 a RAM Clinic in Scott County saw 773 patients. 304 were tested and issued eye glasses; 37 mammograms; dentists saw 320 patients performing 929 extractions, 218 fillings, and 38 cleanings. ALQI is proud to help find the volunteers to work at the clinic, provide the food, funding, and be the contact for RAM in Scott County.
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Remote Area Medical Clinic (RAM) Dental area
2008- Scott County, TN

Remote Area Medical Clinic 2008. The sterilizing area of Dental Clinic, Scott County, TN

Snake Park Medical Clinic

Meserani Snake Park provides a free medical clinic. All proceeds from the Maasai Cultural Museum go towards supplying medical equipment and anything else that is required to run the clinic. Over Landers help and donate supplies when passing through. Meserani's medical clinic has approximately 1000 patients per month and growing. The clinic is expanding and is in the process of building a larger clinic and the old clinic will be turned into an orphanage.
Meserani Snake Park Medical Clinic

Saturday, January 23, 2010