Malawi Blog 7

Today we traveled a little more than two hours on challenging dirt roads to another underserved community in the rolling hills South and West of where we are staying.

On this visit there were no kids to run along side the bus and welcome us and the buildings we were given to set up our clinic in front of were sparsely populated.

We started the day thinking the numbers of people we would see would be very low but as we finalized the work stations, the people started to come and the line began to form.

Day 1 of our clinics we saw 122 people.  Day two grew to 313 people.  Day 3 our daily total jumped to 379 and then Day 4 broke the 400 mark with 433.  Day 5 came in at 414 patients for a total for the week of 1,661 patients seen and treated.

We planned supplies for a week that would see 1,200 patients to so to be at 1,661 and still have a half day clinic left is amazing.

We ran out if some medicines but in some cases were able to substitute others.  We have had to send for additional supplies in Lilongwe twice to keep up with the demand. By this time in the week we have developed into a well oiled machine with efficient set up and tear down processes and smooth patient flow through induction, labs, clinicians visits, data capture, and pharmacy.

We closed the day with a dinner at the hotel with the Opulence staff and the Mission Leadership Team from Resurrection that had come to Malawi for meetings.  The evening ended with a group picture and a review of the plans for tomorrow, our last day in the field.