Healing fromWithin
The recent rains have turned the rutted dirt tracks into a “slip and slides” if anyone remembers those. Our driver and Medic Outpost team member Silas, did a great job in picking his way through the mudholes and thick brush to reach the ILKELUNYETI Clinic. This was a very important trip and we had to make the clinic before mid-day. Our first class of community health workers is schedule for this afternoon and many of them have walked a long way to get to the clinic. The clinic medical officers Charles and Moses had a make shift classroom set up outside. Even with the rain, the air was hot and thick. It made any attempts to sit inside impossible because there was not a breath of wind.
A few years ago, the government of Kenya had made a feeble attempt to develop a community health volunteer program. They assembled a group of volunteers and promised them training, equipment, and a stipend for participating in the program. The stated goal was to the training and resources back to their communities. The IKELUNYETI clinic services 9 different villages clusters of around 1800 people. Unfortunately for everyone in this story, the Kenya health department did not follow up on their end of the bargain. The volunteers received only a couple of days of training and only one or two stipend payments. The program never got off the ground. Medic Outpost is working to resurrect the program and develop a solid team of CHV’s. CHV’s are essential to the health and wellbeing of the Maasai people. All of the clinics in rural Kenya are under resourced and IKELUNYETI is not exception. People often have to walk over 10 miles one way to the clinic for treatment only to find the clinic has no medication or capacity to address their healthcare needs. People lose confidence in the clinic and stop going entirely. This attitude proves deadly in the Africa bush. Illness and injuries that would be easily treated are ignored and then fester into life threating maladies. Diarrhea, dehydration, malnutrition, infections all types grow and become critical.
What is the answer? Medic Outpost believes that teams of CHV’s can change the narrative on access to basic healthcare in the rural environment. CHV’s are not healthcare professionals. The Medic Outpost training course does not make them healthcare professionals. What our training does is we provide basic knowledge in chronic health, infant and children health, basic first aid, and most important in basic diagnostic skills. CHV’s then follow up and monitor treatments and consultations made by the clinic medical officers. This link creates a continuum of care and saves countless lives. Medic Outpost training and equipment benefits are multiplied by combining them with a telemedical component that allows for treatment and follow up in the villages. The extreme transportation problems are decreased and can be almost eliminated except for the most critical patients that are out of the scope of the CHV’s and the clinic capacity. It creates the model of rural people taking care of rural people where they need it most.
Larry Hill
