March 5th - Project Hope

Hello everyone..

so this blog is out of order.. this is about my day today.

So today I started working with Project Hope, their primary job at the hospital is working with HIV patients and distributing the medications. I met Lillian (she is from Bamenda the bigger city near by here) and she was SO unbelievably informational and taught me all about the HIV medications and the availability. She explained all of the different types of medication the different groups and how different treatments use different groups and different medications in different groups. I can actually explain it all for real, just not in this post cause that's too much work. She told me all about the program and the childrens program Global Giving. The HIV medications are free for the patients, the government provides that. Which is amazing. Patients are given the appropriate medication based on the type of HIV, severity, other illnesses they have or are on treatment for and how they are responding to the current meds. Each month they must return to get the next months worth. This is a life-long treatment process so you can only imagine how many drugs are given out.
They were out of medications for 3 weeks and just got them last week so they had 750 patients come to pick up their month supply and generally in one month they have 1000 total. So that was a hectic week for them.
Lillian told me about the culture of how talking about sex is not common and people deny that they have so when they are diagnosed with HIV they blame it on witch craft and that somebody has cursed them out of jealousy. It's really sad, but very interesting. The patients are responsible for returning to pick up their meds, and taking them daily or twice daily at the right time. So of course many stray from the schedule or stop taking and return only months down the road.
Gosh it's just such a different world.

so I'm working on updating their excel spreadsheet (that hasn't been updated since september 2010) that contains every new patient added to the list in their program. Then from that I'll update the list of babies who's parents are HIV positive and are working in the program to prevent the transmission to their child. After updating I'll work with MacDonald (who's 2 siblings live in the U.S., I'm not sure where in Cameroon they are from though) in order to find out as much information and use the excel spreadsheet to track the patients health and prescriptions.

Everything is done in paper. so even the patients (all patients) have a notebook they are supposed to keep and take with them to the doctor. This is called their "medical records/history". and many return to this hospital but some come from others, some of the books are updated some are not.. and the patients and families are required to pay before they are allowed to leave. I have more on this in another blog. I'll post as soon as I can.

Miss you all!

ps i'm totally adjsuted to the time zone. bed at 9 up at 5 (today) with the roosters, and with the sun by 6. It's how it works. also i'm doing just fine health wise.. weather is fantastic here. No stomach issues yet (knock on wood)..