Hospital Tour and St. Jude School

              During our usual Friday workday at Mt. Meru hospital, I went on a tour of some of the hospital wards. Mt Meru is one of the nicer government hospitals in Tanzania but the standards are nothing close to what I’m used to seeing in the developed world and especially through my volunteering experience at Duke Hospital. We toured the maternity ward which was missing both an oxygen concentrator and a vacuum pump, both of which are pieces of equipment that I have worked on during the 3 total workdays I have been to Mt Meru for.  Seeing the equipment missing and hearing from the nurses that they would really like to have the equipment helped contextualize the importance of the hospital work that Mikkel and I will be doing at Nkoaranga hospital which is a more rural government hospital than Mt. Meru Hospital so will likely have less working equipment and less availability to resources in general.  

             We also toured the neonatal ward which was startling on a few levels. Our coordinator Alex said that this was the first time ever he had seen a neonatal ward in developing world in which the entire room was kept at 36 degrees Celsius. Typically, infant warmers are used for each individual baby. The  sickest babies were in one room, with another room for babies with jaundice or similar less threatening problems and the healthy babies were in a 3rd room. The nurses and doctors as well as a Lithuanian lady who seemed to be in charge of the ward all worked in the sauna-like conditions to take care of the children.  People were allowed to come in and out of the neonatal ward fairly easily and we weren’t required to be clean/sanitary to enter the ward with even the sickest babies. Some of the newborns were as big as my fist and had little chance to survive I’m sure.  Like the maternity ward, the nurses were similarly challenged by a lack of oxygen concentrators, bili lights, and equipment in general they needed to care for the babies. The Lithuanian lady in charge of the ward said that they had been promised a new oxygen concentrator from a donation but had never actually received it.  The radiology/imaging department had an X-ray machine as well as an ultrasound machine, both of which were under government service contracts. Most imaging is under government service contracts in Tanzania, which means it is unlikely I would be able to apply some knowledge from my ultrasound research at Duke on an ultrasound machine here unless it was broken and the government service contract had expired.

              This week, many of the students in my program (EWH) worked with some Tanzanian university students at our training center (MS-TCDC) after our classes to give advice on PowerPoint presentations that they were going to give in English. Saturday, we also took a day trip to St. Jude primary and secondary school in Usa River, where we were matched with students in their final year of secondary school to talk about university, future plans, education in Tanzania, Swahili, English, and life at a boarding school in Tanzania.  These students are some of the top in Tanzania, and many of them will attend university in the next few years, either in Tanzania, South Africa, or America.  I was paired with Emmanual, a history and policy student who wanted to study international relations at the university level with a goal of becoming an ambassador.  I talked to many students, and each of them had a clear vision for their future, whether it be to become a doctor, teacher, ambassador, accountant or any number of professions.  This emphasis on shaping a plan for the future was apparent when talking to the Tanzanian university students at TCDC as well.  One student I talked with wanted to become an entrepreneur and the other hoped to study mineral engineering and work in Tanzania.  It’s exciting to me that planning for the future is emphasized so strongly in the schools for these students and that these students are excited about their future and have big dreams for their lives.  All of the students I talked to were in the private schools here, and they told me that the government schools are not good in Tanzania and it is very difficult to get a useful education in the government schools.  Tutaonana baadaye!