Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

This past week I was very busy with visitors again.  We aren't letting the beds get cold!  Monday and Tuesday were holidays here--Hero's Day (similar to Veteran's Day in US) and so we were able to work half day at the hospital.   Just before lunch I had a visit from the Dr. Erik Scharrer family from Nhowe Mission Hospital.  This is a Church of Christ non-instrumental mission northeast of Harare.  They came by to visit our hospital and share about how we do things that might help them.  I was happy to spend the afternoon with them before they traveled on to Harare and then home. At 6:30 p.m. David Green from Marondera in Zimbabwe (East of Harare) showed up with 4 brothers--The Lachowscy's .  David spent a month with us in December last year as he is still trying to pursue a job in health care.  The brothers are all in medical school in Poland and were out visiting his family so they came to see a hospital in Zimbabwe.  They were able to do rounds two days with the

We had an incredibly busy week with a new group of University of Washington Global Health students joining us on Sunday the 6th and staying through yesterday morning (11th).  There were 7 students and 2 teachers and a driver and my 2 UK students.  So we were cooking for 13 of us each meal. They experienced shadowing doctors and nurses, helping in OPD clinic and Antenatal Clinic, helping in the Laboratory and watching 3 C/Sections.  Our UK students were happy to get to assist in the C/Sections.  They also went out for a vaccination clinic and weighed kids, measured kids and gave Vitamin A and Polio drops.  They got a good taste of bush life and global health in a rural setting and they all seemed to enjoy it. On Thursday we started a Youth Conference for our Province that has seen over 500 kids gathering to sing and dance and have lessons, Bible competitions and hear sermons.  We joined them for church this morning and they were all very enthusiastic in their singing and dancing!

Two medical students, Henry and Jeyam from Norwich, UK arrived on 22 July to be with us for 3 weeks of their elective studies.  They have completed 4 of 5 years and have been kept busy following our doctors in outpatients and inpatients and theater as well as drawing bloods for our ART patients. During the week we continued to unpack boxes from the container that arrived recently.  We found several boxes of "Ebola outfits" that hospitals bought a couple of years ago during the scare in the US and now dumped unused.  We had Carolyn Mereki who was helping me to unpack put the whole suit on!  Scared a lot of people around the hospital.  We are using the suits for our men when they paint! Last Saturday we had our younger kids for ART support group and their medicine supply as well as blood draws for viral loads.  We had 52 children from 5-12 years of age. We also had Dr. Katzenstein from Stanford who is working with us in our kids on ART research and group, Dr. Ben Pensky