Message from Basile Wijters and Ana Wijters-Mont Forte, who are working as volunteers for 6 weeks to share their knowledge with the Andersen Medical Center.

Basile writes:

Ana, my wife and I, arrived three weeks ago in Kitale. After long journey with an unscheduled overnight stop in the ever-busy Cairo, we had an initial introduction to the farm, our host and hostess and the hospital, and were able to relax. Not difficult, with the breathtaking views of Mount Elgon and the border with Uganda from the guesthouse porch. We were already impressed.

The next day I went to work early. Bea had a meeting with the three clinical officers of the hospital, the pharmacist, the head nurse and the head of the HIV clinic. I had never been to Africa and frankly did not know what to expect. How would they react to my presence? What I could I contribute and was my advice necessary? The plan was, that I, as a doctor with 5 years experience in cardiology and internal medicine, was to focus on the training of clinical officers. Bea asked me to go into the operation of the clinic to take a look.

The ice was quickly broken and we were able to get to work. I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the level of knowledge and experience of the clinical officers (CO) David and Geoffrey. They had completed a study of only 4 years, but were working, thinking and functioning as fully fledged doctors. I have little experience of what they encounter on a daily basis. There are few cases of malaria and tuberculosis in Dutch hospitals. They themselves are very interested in Western diseases and treatments with which I am more familiar. 3 mornings a week we  start earlier than usual, so that I can give training presentations to the CO's, but even the nurse is enthusiastically present every time.

The ECG machine has finally been put into service. It had been waiting for some time, since nobody knew how to work it, let alone analyse the results. There is quite a lot of heart disease, particularly abnormalities of the heart valves due to childhood rheumatic fever. A heart tracing will provide additional information about the size of the heart and cardiac arrhythmias. They were busy with the machine all day, they would prefer to give just about everyone a cardiogram.

All in all it has been a wonderful personal experience. It's great to be able to impart something of your knowledge and skills to others. In conjunction with our trips in the weekends, it is already a successful trip, and we are only halfway...

Basile August 3, 2009