Visiting at the Rujeko Clinic

We have had an opportunity to visit in the local clinic next to our Activity Center where we are normally working. Clinic is called Rujeko clinic and it is responsible of taking care of all the people in Dzivarasekwa, so there is lot of  patients in different ages during the day. It is a quite small and includes three wards which are:

-maternity 

-baby

-outpatient ward 

We spent one day in each ward during the three weeks.

The clinic is run by nurses and they have lot of responsibility because there is only one doctor working in outpatient ward once a week and that’s why nurses prescribe and give all kind of medicine for example opiods to patients. We had to applied for permission (because you must have a lisence to work) from the city of Harare to only visiting and touring at the clinic but like the Sister in Charge said "you will learn by doing" so our visits there were more working than touring.

Our first time at the clinic was in the maternity ward. Pregnant women come there for examinations and get to know how far the pregnancy is and is there everything okay with the baby. We were calculating their due date, taking their blood pressure and weights. After that were doing examinations for mothers tummies to know the babys position and for example find babys back to listen the heart beat.  

Women also come there for delivery and if there is something wrong with the delivery they can stay couple days at the post natal ward for observation. Nurses and midwifes are assisting the labor and there is no doctor at all in that ward. There are about ten labors in a day and most of the local women are still delivering at their home. Most women in labor were very young and there were no father-to-be around. 

After visiting in the maternity ward we went to see the baby-clinic ward. New born babies come to the clinic once a month so that nurses can see are they developing normally. First we were examining two week old babies. We took weight, height, checked the reflects, eyes, skin, navel and looked if there is anything not normal. Most of the kids received extra nutrition from the clinic because they were suffering malnutrition. The nurses introduced us the local immune schedule and we were also giving the vaccines to the children, like polio and measles. 

Our last visit was in the out patient ward. First we checked the equipments for in case of an emergency, like oxygen, adrenalin and laryngoscope. Many of those important equipments were unavailable. After that we were following the nurse when she was taking the patients in. Most of the patients were very sick, having a fever, cough and pain in their body. Nurses sent only the urgent cases to bigger hospital. Usually the nurse prescribe the same package of medicine for every patience; paracetamol, ciprofloxacin, amoxcyllin and vitamins. Afternoon we spent in the HIV testing and counselling clinic. About 20 people come for the test every day, five of them are usually positive. Part of them were older men and also young couples came to do the test together. Before testing they got counselling of HIV and Aids. The pre-test-counselling was information about disease, treatment and what happens if the test is positive. The counselor was especially telling that if you got HIV it doesnt mean that you are going to have Aids. And also, after if the test is negative, you still need to go testing every three months. 

The visits in the clinic, especially in the HIV- counselling, were very interested. It was also good to know what kind of work nurses are doing here in Zimbabwe.