Back to work

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After getting back from two consecutive long weekends, with only a short period of productivity separating them, it was time to buckle down and get to work again.

Tuesday we went to Ngwerere again, and while we saw a better crowd for the IMCI stuff, it still is the only site without a CTC admission. While the kids there might be better fed than in other places, I'm still inclined to think that word isn't getting out as well as it could be; after all, about 2/3 of our IMCI business for the day didn't come in until Naommy and I went and drummed up interest in the area around the clinic.

Wednesday was a day out at Mungule, which went pretty smoothly, but more importantly, it was the first big discharge day for the CTC program! That's right, things have been going for 8 weeks now, which means that it's the first day that the earliest MUAC admissions could be discharged. And what success! All of the kids I saw that day, who had started off in the red "danger" zone for MUAC, were now in the green "safe" zone-- and most weren't even close to the yellow! I was so proud of my little, previously malnourished little babies. What good eaters!

Because our first day of the program was a big day for admissions, we had a large number of discharges in this first batch. I expect that, over the next couple weeks, the program's enrollment will stabilize somewhat, and we'll have a better idea of the size we can expect throughout the year.

Last night, after finishing at Mungule, Rebecca, Amanda, and I went to have dinner with a group of Canadian students from Ottawa University who are doing a variety of small projects for Bwafwano. Because they have a large group, they rented out a house in Chazanga, and if I hadn't seen the place myself, I wouldn't have believed such a house would even exist in that compound! The only downside to it is that it's on the same power grid as the rest of Chazanga, so it gets electricity a couple times a week, at best. Still, the candlelit dinner was very good.

Today was a day at UTH for us. We spent our morning in pediatrics rounds, and then walked over to the adult side for some ICU rounds with Phil Seidenberg. I missed meeting Dr. Somwe, mostly because I wasn't able to check e-mail to see when he could meet, but I dropped off some things for him, and we will probably meet in the next couple weeks.

Tonight we're all planning to go to a performance by Barefeet, the theater troupe of street kids in Lusaka. It's apparently their last performance before they go on a European tour. Hopefully, Nicholas will be making a guest appearance with his former organization.

OK, I'm all caught up now. I don't have any more big outings planned for my stay here, so I should be able to post fairly consistent updates from now until I head back to the US. Just a few weeks left to go!

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