Medical student by day...: The Circus has come to Town

On Saturday, the quarterly medical team arrived. We met them at the airport in Port-au-Prince and I have to admit, it was a little exhausting talking in English all day. For the rest of Saturday and Sunday, the team got all the supplies organized and coordinated tasks for a busy week of clinic. This morning, the team loaded into three tap-taps, all filled to the brim with medicine and supplies and headed to Do Digue. To people on the street, the caravan had to look as crazy as the circus.

There are many amazing things about the clinics run by CHI. First, a new one on this trip, is that we partnered with one of our communities for the location. The community members moved church benches into an open space and covered it with tarps for a waiting area. The community meeting space was triage and vitals. People allowed their homes to be turned into exam and procedure rooms. Another house was a pharmacy and another a dentist’s office. Community members set up stands to sell food and water to people who travelled long distances. The most popular guy was the man with freeze pops.

The second great thing is that the clinics promote continuous primary care. Many of the main problems are similar to what the majority of primary care clinicians see at home: high blood pressure, type II diabetes and acid reflux. Patients need education about life style modification and long term medication. The pharmacy distributes enough medication for patients for three months. The patients can then return to clinic in three months, be checked again, have medication modified as needed and get their refills.

Of course there are problems, which are less common or virtually nonexistent, to primary care physicians back home - tons of STIs, some malnourished children, worms, hernias that haven’t been fixed and malaria. We treat everyone that comes through for worms, can test and treat gonorrhea, chlamydia and malaria and we can refer malnourished children to an inpatient center in Haiti.

The third great thing about CHI’s clinic is also new. Launched at the January clinic, in rural Haiti with chickens and goats running next to you, we have an electronic medical record. This will allow practioner to truly give continuous primary care. There is a record of the patient’s previous chief complaints and treatments. It also allows CHI to better prepare for clinics by seeing the total number of medication dispersed and to track trends in diseases over time.

Today the team was able to provide primary care to about 250 patients. Tomorrow they will be back up in Do Digue at 8 ready to see 250 more.