This week a short term medical team is coming in for a week of clinics in Mathare North. It was a bit chaotic today, but pretty fun. I worked in the pharmacy helping to count meds – particularly chewable vitamins. I bagged so many vitamins, my hands were totally coated in chewable vitamin gunk. It dyed my hands red.
In the afternoon I shadowed a doctor in consultation. Two things stuck out to me. The first being how many cases of ringworm we saw. Ringworm is actually a fungal infection and we spotted it on most of the boy’s scalps. In Mathare, it is easily spread when a kid goes in to the barber shop to get his head shaved and an unclean razor is used. If the barber shaves a kids head who has the fungus and then doesn’t clean off the razor and nicks another kid’s head the new kid will get ringworm too. It is very very common.
The second thing that stood out in the day was meeting a girl with a large abdominal hernia. The bulge stuck out just below her belly button and was a little bigger than a baseball. The doctor told me that it wasn’t immediately life threatening because it was so big. But, he said that it could get larger, especially if she ever gets pregnant. I asked a Kenyan nurse there how much it would cost to have the hernia looked at in the hospital. She said it would be about 25,000 shillings which is a little over $300. The girl’s family will probably never be able to afford it.
It's so sad that some conditions could so easily be treated, but they aren't. My heart just aches for the physical and economic hardships that the people bear. Through God they have hope for a spiritual inheritance though they may have nothing that is deemed by the world as valuable in this life.
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