Rwanda Global Health Internship

Today was busy and tiring! We spent the whole day at the Rwanda National Library working on our presentations for the Biryogo medical staff tomorrow. The wifi was the best we've had here but still not great so the presentations took us a lot longer than they normally would. But we had a lot of fun spending time at the beautiful library and with the University of Rwanda students! I'm very excited to present to the medical staff tomorrow!

T oday was a pretty simple day! We started the day by meeting with the cleaning staff at the health center. We talked to them about their cleaning procedures and practices. The cleaners are a really important part of the IPC healthcare team that are often forgotten about. We were a little bit hesitant about this meeting because we hadn’t really witnessed any cleaning during our observations and we didn’t smell any cleaner anywhere in the health center. We were pleased to find out that the few members of the cleaning staff were very serious and passionate about their work. One of the workers said you “have to have a heart of perseverance to be a cleaner at a clinic”. Haha he was right! It is so important for the staff to be passionate about their work so it is done right.They explained in detail all of their procedures for cleaning and they showed us all of their cleaning supplies. I was a little sad to see they didn’t have much disinfectant and their stock of supplies was very sma...

Today was an amazing day!! I felt like a real public health official! We began the day by presenting our IPC observations and solutions with the IPC coordinator, Cecille and the Health Center director, Veronica. Suzanna, Elise and I presented our findings in the nutrition and vaccination area. They seemed to take our feedback very well. There were a few misunderstandings that took a little while to talk out but I think those were mainly due to gaps in translation. We were talking about how nurses should never recap their needles and they ran out and got sharps boxes and showed us how to assemble them. We knew they used sharps boxes and they did a great job at it! It took us a while to calm them down and explain that we weren’t talking about their sharps box use. They were extremely gracious in taking our criticism and very happy we were there to help them out. Some of the issues we observed, such as drying hands, required more money and weren’t very possible for them to fix. So we ...

Today was a BIG day at the health center! Yesterday we were assigned partners for the rest of the trip as well as a University of Rwanda student to help us translate this week! I got paired with Suzanna from BYU and Elise from the University of Rwanda! I was really excited when I got my partners. Suzanna is hilarious and so smart and observant so it will be good to have her on my observation team! Elise is also very very smart. She wants to go to Johns Hopkins when she graduates from the UR. I have the dream team! Our job today was to spend 30 minutes in each section of the health center and write down any observations we had, good or bad, regarding IPC (infection prevention and control). We were assigned 5 areas; the ARV clinic, the nutrition education and vaccination area, the waiting room, the lab, and the minor surgery room. Here are my observations from today: ARV Clinic *working with an immunocompromised population* The nurse didn’t wipe down the consultation desk in ...

This morning we got up bright and early to head to the Biryogo health center where we will be working this week! Today and tomorrow will be completely for observation and evaluation. We took most of the day touring the facilities and learning about the programs they had available. The health center definitely struggle with resources compared to their intake and there is a lot of work to do. With that said, they are doing great despite their circumstances. Their model is really cool. Not only do they provide healthcare but also social services and educational services. They have numerous community health education programs and a primary school where the children in the sector can go for a couple of years!  The health center is like a small clinic that sees basic patients. There is only one doctor in the entire place and we only saw her once for a few minutes! The director and all of the other medical staff who oversee patient care are nurses. To start the day we met with the dir...

Today we just chilled at the hotel in the morning. We got caught up on sleep and wrote in our journals. We ate a yummy breakfast and lunch and then headed out.  It was nice to relax before a big week at the Biryogo Health Center!

Well The safari was amazing! We just drove through the park in our land cruiser for about 7 hours! The top comes o ff  of the car so we got to stand on the seats and stick our heads out to look at everything! Pretty much everywhere you looked you could see something cool once we got deep into the park. Our driver/guide didn’t really talk at all so we kind of had to guess what things were haha. I wish he could’ve given us facts about what animals we saw and where we were but thats okay! The ride was really peaceful and the silence gave us opportunity to take everything in. We had to be super quiet anyways otherwise all the animals would be scared o ff . We saw SO many hippos and crocodiles! They are both huge!!! I would never want to find myself in the lakes out here. Haha there are scary things in there; hippos, crocs, snakes and who knows what else! The gira ff es were probably my favorite part! Halfway through our safari we stopped in this grassland for lunch and there were p...