Rural HIV/AIDS clinics

November 4, 2008

Wes and April should be arriving at the Kitchener airport tonight at 10:15, after about 35 hours in the air and in airports!

I am an extra day here in Hlotse because of the following opportunity:

I spent the morning touring one of the rural HIV/AIDS clinics up in the hills. Riding rough tracks in the OHAfrica Toyota HILUX  truck to visit these this rural nursing station with the nurse in charge of the project.  I was pretty fortunate to meet with one of them and hear her story of the numbers of HIV+ patients she dispenses ARV’s to each month (over 40), and the number of HIV+ patients she monitors each month (over 200).  I think that there are approximately 11 such rural nursing stations involved in the same work.  One nurse at Tsepong, ‘M’e Fuosi (sp?) manages them all and somehow keeps track of each centre and spends each day traveling from centre to centre, checking in with the nurses and making sure the charts are updated.

They are experiencing some issues with patients feeling better and then going off ARV’s – believing themselves to be better.  This is alarming, but the nursing stations follow-up with the families of these patients and track down as many of these patients as possible to get them back into the office and back on ARV’s.

I think my spine may be permanently damaged from the roads, but it was a very interesting trip. 

Tomorrow morning I start vacation. I will pack up and head north through SA and to Gaborone, Botswana.  En route to Gobabis, Namibia.