Village Clinics

Sunday, June 11, 2017

What an exciting, crazy, eye-opening 10 days with the JBU medical team. 
The JBU team consisted of: 19 nursing students, 3 non-nursing students, 3 nurses, and 2 doctors.



We had 3 clinic days, 1 at Esther's House and 2 in surrounding villages.
We transformed a church and a government building into a useable space to treat patients.  
When resources are limited, creativity is key.
As long as we had room, health providers and medicine, we were doing well.

The day before our clinics, we passed out medical cards.  Each card was a ticket that could be used to be seen the following day.  We would be limited on the amount of people we could see.  While passing out cards, we split into teams to talk about Jesus and pray for any needs they had.

The morning of the clinics, we created rooms made of boards and tarps, set up plastic chairs and tables, and rolled out caution tape to ensure kids wouldn’t huddle all around the buildings (I later found out how essential this really was).



Lines and crowds gathered outside our doors, but we only had limited amount of time.  We saw everyone who had a ticket, and tried to squeeze in the rest.  Instead of lining up all day, they set their health passports in a line as a way to know who would go next (genius).
Side note: a Malawian health passport is essentially a medical record.  Each time they go to a hospital or clinic, the doctors write in it and use it as a frame of reference to know medical history.  



We saw over 70 patients each day.  Different health needs entered our doors.  Adults, kids, chronic diseases, allergies, arthritis, malaria, and more.

Translators were there to break the language barriers and 3 of them were pastors. 
We had a prayer room (in our fancy tarp divided building) to encourage those who were needing hope and to ask for healing.  



At the end of our day, we packed up everything we previously set up.  Tarps down, chairs stacked, boards unscrewed, car packed.  And just like that, the buildings were back to how they were before.

I was able to learn a lot from the doctors and nurses who came to serve.
I am definitely not a nurse, and never plan to be one (needles- no thank you!).  But their knowledge + extra medicine left behind will be useful for our kids at Esther’s House.

Thankful for those willing to come to serve and use their skills to reach the needs of others here in Malawi!