Mombasa Kenya, another clinic, new challenges and meeting an WFP colleague

After leaving Mai Mahiu last week, and now in Mombasa, with just one last task open on my list of things, like last week, getting the Comets system to connect to it's main system and other clinic's, unfortunately I must say, I didn't succeed for 100 % as getting and keeping an connection running, but as of Sundayevening, Ian contacted me and it's working.

In the meantime it's a known fact, I might run into similar issues at the other clinic's, having power is also a challenge, it's not constantly available, there are many (so called planned) but also just out of the blue, power downs which sometimes takes a minute or two, and this week at Mombasa it took several hours before the power gets up again.

Although the local staff is used to the heat, even they start to become overheated and all seek shelter outside the clinic in the shade of some trees, enjoying the mild sea breeze, which is very polluted and looks like fog or brown air in the distance, so I drunk liter’s of water to keep myself cool while they just took a sip every now and then, what a difference compared to me...

I was able to train the new clinician, Khadija Omar, a young women and eager to learn, even though we have had the same difficulty, getting the connection up and running. The clinic is visited by many locals and truck drivers that have to wait for the "Port Authority" to get on the port ground. At this location I met John Kazungu, he explained the whole operation and how this clinic works. He keeps the books, advises people and send them to the clinician, the councilor or both.

To inform people they hand out leaflets or just show a video/dvd to provide information, or just a place to rest and have a talk while they have to wait, because in this area there's no truck stop that I have noticed, so they just walk in for a cold glass of water and in the meantime, John asks questions about their health and if they want to see the councilor or clinician.

I have found out that the councilor is sitting in a separate room, due to the nature of conversation, there's no entry of data about the client, just if the person is male or female, and the nature of this conversation, they can also be tested for some deceases like TB, Malaria or HIV, which will be performed in private, so no names or details are entered into a system, but this might be useful, just to have a simple computer with connection to Comets as some of these people just come in to speak to the councilor instead of the clinician.

I think it would be a nice initiative to get some of the locations fitted with an extra computer, just to make sure, no data gets lost, just being in the books and no interaction between the councilor and clinician, they speak to each other but if they could just create an client-ID, the client can mention it, without looking over the huge books in the office, and might get better help instead of diagnosing the client like he/she was never in there, just a thought...........

Looking back on this week, it was like Mai Mahiu, almost finished, the clinician is confident working with the new tool that was provided, all medicine numbers are up to date, now the only thing is get connected, but the solution is coming soon....to be tested.

At my last day at Mombasa, I accidently run into Ben, working for WFP in the Philippines, he told me, they are in an Emergency Response training day at Mombasa, together with the national armed forces, to see how these teams will interact, when working together in case anything would happen in these countries.

Next week I will be at Burnt Forest, looking forward to the next challenge...