A Health Care Tour

This morning while having breakfast outside at the lodge where we are staying, we received a What's App message that Esther Mumba (Pastor Henry's wife and the head nurse at Mansa General Hospital) would be arriving in an hour to pick us up to tour some health facilities. Okay - quick change of plans and clothes and we jumped in the little mini-Toyota that Henry has lent us and went to meet her.

I could write a lengthy post about what we saw and experienced at the health clinic and the hospital, but I will just post some general comments here today. First we went to the Senema clinic which is about 20 minutes outside of Mansa in the outskirts. It is an extremely large clinic that serves about 200 patients a day (many of whom walk a long way there to get care). I was impressed by their PMTCT (prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV) program. They test every pregnant woman and have community counselors that conduct education and one-on-one follow up in the community. However today they had run out of HIV tests so no one could be tested. There are four nurses on staff and one doctor and many medical assistants and support staff. The doctor is relatively new to the clinic, a dedicated Congolese woman and she sees about 40 patients a day (both those in the ward and outpatient). In the US a busy day for a physician is about 25. Today the patients would wait about 8 hours to see her,  but she said that she would stay until all were seen.

Senema Clinic

Our tour of Mansa General Hospital was quite extensive as it is a very large teaching hospital. It is currently one of two hospitals in Mansa and the other is a private "fee paying"  Catholic run hospital. All care at Mansa General (and the health clinics) is funded through the Zambian government (although they also have a "fee paying" section as well). It was organized chaos that reminded me of a combat hospital without the blood. The one image that stands out in my mind is a five year old boy with flat eyes and a distended TB stomach standing by himself at the entrance to the ward with no medical staff or family near him.

Notably, anyone here in the Luapula Province that seeks care at the hospital or one of the clinics receives a Care Card on which all of their health record is stored. Whenever they go to any facility in the province their health information is readily available to medical staff. Very progressive. I wish that we could overcome the technology barriers to be able to have this available in California