Blogs from Uganda, Africa - page 8

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We woke up to a lot of mud and water underfoot in the aftermath of the thunderstorm. The mosquitos had also re-surfaced so we packed up quick and got on the road. However we soon had to stop to get Dan’s passport and yellow fever certificate out the boot as we headed to the border. Unfortunately we stopped on some biting ants nest and whilst amusing they did bite Alain quite a lot to which he got a tiny bit irate. Our drive was relatively uneventful to the border save for witnessing 7 people on a motorbike and Dan also claimed to have seen two men and three goats on one too. We made our way to the border not sure what to expect but we were pleasantly surprised to be through in under an hour. ... read more

Hi All, I have spent the last two weeks in Mbarara volunteering in the emergency department at the government-run Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital. I was fortunate enough to experience such a breadth of cases in such a short time. I saw all kinds of emergencies and realized that, although tropical diseases can be so different from western ones, the types of cases that present in the emergency department are very similar. There was a lot of trauma (mostly from boda boda accidents or mob justice), overdose, burns, stroke, hypertensive crisis, and the like. I felt comfortable and useful in surgical emergency because it was highly procedure-based. While speaking very minimal Runyankole, I am able to perform procedures but taking a history or constructing a differential diagnosis with physicians proved difficult due to the language barrier. I ... read more

I finished up my last week in Rugazi and have completed our two-week rotation at the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital. I worked in the Toto and Natasha wards (malnutrition) as well as Pediatric Admissions and Outpatient Department. The latter two were definitely my favourite as I enjoyed listening to the differentials and learning more about the Ugandan healthcare system. One case that stood out to me was a jaundice baby that was born with a defective liver. The doctor in the room informed me that organ transplants are not done in Uganda so the mother would have to take the baby to another country, which she likely could not afford, and thus the baby was going to die. The following week one of the nutrition students and myself gave an impromptu nutrition talk on hypertension in ... read more

Agandi! Warning: extra long post ahead, to make up for the ever-growing gaps between posts. And Happy National Ice Cream Day! Technically it's an American thing, but I'm going to unofficially declare it as an international holiday as additional justification for my ice cream intake. ;) We've been all over the place these past couple of weeks--first to Kampala, then Gulu, then back to Kampala, and coming "home" to Mbarara last Monday. We got scooped up into some of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into our supervisors' research with adolescent nutrition and sexual/reproductive health and rights (SRHR). We sat in on some meetings with representatives from BRAC international (an organization that actively promotes and provides opportunities for the empowerment of women), and various universities and hospitals. It was very interesting to talk to the public health ... read more