Just the way lawyers take pro bono cases to represent people who can't afford to represent themselves, medical outreaches are the pro bono of doctors....
They are the way we give back to the society In our own little way and It's always a day well spent, I guess it's always so when you do something you really love doing.
Today, we went to Udi in Oji Local Government Area, Enugu State, Nigeria for a medical outreach and I really enjoyed it there.....
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I enjoyed the site of seeing many elderly people who couldn't afford going to the hospital for a proper medical checkup neither did I enjoyed the site of seeing persons who were already dying scientifically but yet they didn't know they were dying;
It's just that I enjoyed the joy and happiness on their faces that they were finally seen and examined by a doctor and the whole feeling like they've got extra life added on for them in their lifespan.
The location was a little bit far from my school so we left earlier so we could attend to a lot of persons..
We started with prayers and then the business of the day which was beautifully organised in stations to make it more organised...
This was the station where the villagers made their first contact for us to get information such as their names,age, state of origin, occupation, religion, marital status and tribe.
This helps in management of patients properly because details such as their religious denomination will affect your management for instance; you won't be considering blood transfusion as the first line management of a patient who's a Christian of Jehovah's Witness denomination when he or she is bleeding.
This is the station where the villagers' vitals where taken; parameters such as their temperature, blood pressure, blood glucose level, respiratory rate and pulse rate.
This gives you a clue on both the diagnosis and the management of some chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension etc
This was the station where a detailed history of the villagers' presenting complaints were explored... When it started and what has been done since the symptoms became symptomatic are fully explored.
Then counselling on how best to go about the illness' management and finally a pharmacological prescription is given.
This was where I was... It wasn't just about giving the drugs prescribed for them.
It entailed giving them the drugs and then explaining to them in details on how to take the medication since most of them couldn't even read well and weren't staying with someone...
You had to tell them the ones to take once, twice and thrice and how many tablets they needed at each time (I really hope they remember)
Intermittently, health topics were discussed; topics such as:
The importance of Human Papilloma Virus vaccine and it's role in protecting against cervical cancer
The relevance of keeping to all the immunization schedule of our children
Malaria, it's symptoms, treatment and ways of preventing them
Questions were asked
£It was a wrap, the villagers were happy that we visited and we were happy we came*
Please if your grandparents stay in the village, always make out time to visit them and take them for routine check ups because most of them never know they're dying because they aren't taken proper care of...
Imagine seeing two women walking around with a blood pressure of 220/120mmhg, that's way tilted to hypertensive encephalopathy which is an emergency but yet they don't even know.
Many deaths especially in our rural areas could be easily prevented and managed, let's not leave our elders to die in vain just because of improper care.
All pictures are mine
Thanks for reading and have a nice day