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| Medical volunteer Karlijn making patient notes in our home based care folder. |
My name is Karlijn and I have been happily
working as a volunteer on the medical programme in St. Lucia for almost 4 weeks
now. Two of the projects I participate in are Home Based Care (HBC) and 10
Families, let me tell you something more about these projects.
HBC is one of the projects we do during
the morning time. Each week we spend one morning on HBC in Khula and one in
Ezwenelisha.
Together with my fellow medical volunteer Kristina and local African
Impact coordinator Nokwethemba, we drive through the communities to visit the
patients. We’ve got a file full of patients and at the beginning of each week
we make a plan of who we are going to visit, usually around 4 patients a
morning.
The health status of our patients is
very diverse; some are seriously ill and badly need help, others have been very
sick but fortunately have recovered and just need a check-up every once in a
while.
A morning on HBC can be really varied: we redress a wound now and then,
clean a patient, or do exercises with them. Some patients just badly need
company, someone they can pour out their heart to and share their problems
with. It is also important to encourage patients to go to the clinic or even
the hospital. Some patients postpone this far too long with all its
consequences, because they do not want to go there or do not have the means. So,
in this case, we often take patients to the clinic.
What I like most about HBC is that
we have achieved results although we have only been here for four weeks yet. I
also like the variation in the activities and the patients. We’ve got very
young patients, but we also have very old Gogos (old lady/grandmother), who
were born around the first earthquake (we have no idea when that was, but they
certainly look old).
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| Malwande attending creche with our volunteers. |
Our youngest patient is “The little
girl” (we’ve got a nickname for every patient), a three-year-old girl who can’t
walk nor talk. Her name is Malwande, and when we met her she didn’t go to the crèche, just sat down all day. No one
seemed to do exercises with her to learn these things, so there was no
development in her situation. When we visit her, we try to walk with her and
play games. We also brought some toys the last time (donations!) to trigger her
to start moving more.
Most importantly, we convinced her grandmother that she
should take her to the crèche, which she finally did! Now the little girl
really enjoys it, she plays with other children and even started to crawl,
which she did not do before! It may be a small step, but it makes us really
happy to see that she finally has fun and is learning new things.
The 10 Families Programme is one of
the things we do in the afternoon: again, one afternoon in Khula and one in
Ezwenelisha. In each community we have 5 families on the programme. 10 families
is essentially a nutritional programme. We bring Epap, a nutritional
supplement, for the family member(s) who is/are on the programme.
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| Karlijn and fellow medical volunteer Kristina taking the weights of some of our patients on 10 Families. |
The people on
this programme are underweight and unable to reach a healthy body weight
themselves. The reason for this can be disease, but we also have families with
lots of children, which they are unable to feed properly.
When we visit them we
talk about how they’re doing and we take their weight and measure the biceps
circumference to see whether the Epap has any effect. Some are really profiting
from the Epap and have reached a healthy weight because of it. In contrast to
HBC, we see the same persons/ families every week, which means we as volunteers
get to know them and we can see their progress. It makes me feel really involved.
I am not a doctor or a nurse or
anything like that. I do have a little bit of theoretical knowledge because I
did a bachelor in Biomedical Sciences, but that’s it. If you do have a medical
background, it certainly is helpful, but it is not necessary at all.
When you’ve got common sense, interest and enthusiasm, you can make a difference here.
In my experience people are glad and grateful to see you, especially if
you greet them in Zulu! House visits can be happy or they can be heavy, but
they are always interesting and informative.
I still have four more weeks here and I am looking forward to
it!
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