Wednesday, June 8, 2016

First day in Clinic! Yay!

Today was my first day learning about the in's and out's of WE-ACTx For Hope Clinic, local NGO in Rwanda.


Front of WE-ACTx For Hope Clinic in downtown Kigali, Rwanda


I met with Chantal, the Clinical Director here, and she gave me the grand tour: Laboratory, Pharmacy, Nurses Station, Consulation Rooms, Psychosocial services, Logstics and Accounting offices and Reception/Patient Waiting Room.  The morning was spent shadowing in the pharmacy and counting pills of Bactrim, an anitbiotic used to treat bacterial infections (opportunistic infections) that all HIV+ patients must take with their Antiretrovirals (ARV's).  For those who don't know, ARV's are the medications that are used to control the HIV virus and preventing it from replicating, spreading and developing into AIDS.  In this day and age, ARV's are advanced enough that patients can long, healthy lives comparable to those who are HIV negative.  ARV's typically come in "cocktails" that involve multiple types of ARV's taken simulaneously to best control the HIV.

Afterwards, I sat in on several consultation visits with one of the nurses.  She's been with WE-ACTx for Hope for over a year and working as a nurse for over 25.  Typically, her day consists of seeing about 40 patients and discussing any recent labs and how they are adhering to their ARV's.  If they need any sort of counseling, she will direct them to several of the pyschosocial directors, including those dealing with trauma, mothers and children and yound adults.

After breaking for lunch and exploring the town a bit (including a vibrant rendition of church songs in Kinyarwanda), Lizzy and I returned to sit in on a meeting where the psychosocial directors and nurses discussed specific patient cases.  One particular case involved a boy who's mother was not giving him his ARV's on schedule since his CD4 was decreaseing and his Viral Load (CV) was decreasing, both bad things, despite being previously successful on ARV's for several years.  They all suspected that his mother was not ensuring that he adhered to his medication on time each day and, since the father was at work most days, were considering relaying responsibility to the boy's older sibling to ensure his adherence.


View of the streets of Kigali and surrounding mountains from WE-ACTx clinic
That was all for today!  You can watch videos of Kigali buzzing under the morning light or of a man trying to hail a motorcycle (moto) along the street.