Another great day with Fluorspar clinic.
It began with morning rounds which included a woman who had gone into labor! In fact it’s the mother’s 6th delivery so she likely could deliver the baby herself. 3 out of 7 women will deliver at home, but she has elected to come into the clinic to have her baby. No doubt because of the comfortable accommodation here at Fluorspar Clinic and to perhaps have a little quiet time before having to take care of 6 children!
Dr. Andy gave a classroom training session on back related pain. Arthritis is Fluorspar’s 3rd most common complaint or condition presented to the clinic each year, behind respiratory and dermatological issues. The clinic staff seemed super engaged, asking many questions and taking notes.
Dr. Andy Miners with the clinicians at Fluorspar
Dr. Sidiqa along side Jemima (the clinical officer designated to optometry) conducted the clinic’s Thursday vision program. The cases included a boy who had suffered a thorn that penetrated his eye and now suffers from a resulting cataract. Fortunately he should be fine but will require cataract surgery in Eldoret which is a 2 hour car ride. Usually this might be an impossible task to drive 90 kms away but luckily this mother has the resources and the boy should thankfully regain full eyesight.
Dr. Sidiqa Rajani with the young boy
Dr. Ed and Dr. Michael saw out patients in the clinic. The cases can be complicated given the challenges with language barriers and incomplete histories. Putting together a puzzle with missing pieces. But the good news is we were able to make progress on the Chronic Disease program seeing more patients who will be part of the pilot study we are doing on the Fluorspar employees who are 40 years and older. Basically, by using the World Health Organization’s guidelines, we designed a questionnaire for patients to determine a risk score for chronic disease. We’ve been pleased with the results so far and now want to take it out into the field via Community Health Care workers.
So, we are especially excited today as we were able to test the new software which the community health care workers will use out in the field when they see patients in their communities. By collecting 5 simple data points on the patient using a simple cell phone, the healthcare worker will be able to determine the risk score for chronic disease. Depending on the score, she will recommend the patient go to the clinic for medication or the patient will receive it at the next outreach in their area which is held every 2 weeks. We are hoping to begin this process tomorrow when we go to our outreach in Simit. We are quite hopeful this will be of benefit in 2 ways. One, people who are suffering from chronic disease but are potentially unaware of it will be given early treatment resulting in better health outcomes before the disease progresses. And two, the data we collect will be used to measure the presence of chronic disease in these communities which will allow the Fluorspar Clinic to better serve them.
Dr. Andy had another busy day seeing patients complaining of body pain. He worked with 2 clinical officers, Christopher and Samuel, training them as they saw the patients. One of Dr. Andy’s missions is to drill in the mantra “Exercise is Medicine” or in Swahili “ Mazawezi ni dawa”. In an area where resources are scarce we are trying to give strategies to reallocate their drug expenditure. That is, use less on pain medication and more on chronic disease medication!
Dr. Andrew Miners with a patient
Now off to dinner and a good sleep before our outreach tomorrow! Lala salama!
- Stacy