WEEKLY REPORT AS AT 13th TO 19TH DECEMBER 2010

THE CLINIC

The number of patients attended to was 30 and 6 maternity cases, lower than the previous weeks.  This is due to most locals are now traveling to their rural homes for this Christmas festival.  There were 2 KOP girls who came for treatment.

During the week we generated USD 492.94 from out/patients and USD 287.06 from maternity making a total USD 780

The total expenses were USD 459.72 covering mainly drugs and paying locums since most of our staff have gone for Christmas Holiday.

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME

Florence or I will be attending a seminar on how food distribution will be done to the beneficiaries.  Another seminar for the Community Health Workers will be held, before they start distributing food at our centre.

LEARNING CENTRE

Bernard Okoth has gone back to stay with teacher Evelyn, as Florence’s House help has gone home on holiday.  Hendricka took him to Lea Toto where she is following up his case and medication.

On 15^th the children closed for Christmas Holidays and they will be back in January.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

On 16^th the Support Group met as usual. 

They agreed to register their support group with the Government, after which it will enable them to open a bank account and deposit their donation.

In the meantime they have also gone on recess and will be back in January.

Rosemary

December 19^th, 2010

CASH COLLECTED AT THE CLINIC AS 13^th to 19^th DECEMBER 2010

OUT/PATIENTS

DATE		USD
13TH December 14th December 15th December 16th December 17th December 18th December 19th December		37.90 118.92 8.41 64.62 49.08 54.92 80.77
TOTAL		414.62

MATERNITY

DATE		USD
13th December 14th December 15th December 16th December 17th December 18th December 19th December		111.84 39.76 38.52 39.76 24.85 24.85 7.45
TOTAL		287.03

           

EXPENSES 13^th to 19^th DECEMBER 2010

 

DATE	ITEM	USD
13th December	PATIENTS LUNCH DRUGS MISC.	4.72 41.38 12.42
14th December	DRUGS MISC CITY HALL                       REFUND TO PATIENT BANK CHARGES	41.24 62.13 6.21 37.28 12.42
15th December	PATIENTS FOOD DRUGS	8.82 20.00
16TH December	PATIENTS FOOD MISC.	5.71 8.69
17TH December	PARAFFIN PATIENTS FOOD LILLIAN LOCUM PATIENTS CARDS (STATIONEY) DRUGS	3.72 3.72 4.97 34.79 48.03
18TH December	PATIENTS FOOD LILLIAN LOCUM SOLO – LOCUM	3.35 7.45 4.97
19TH December	SELESTINE - LOCUM AGNETA – LOCUM MOSES – LOCUM PTS LUNCH DRUGS MISCELLANOUS REPAIRS - GEDION	14.91 7.45 3.72 3.72 14.91 37.28 8.07
	TOTAL	462.08

WORLD FOOD PROGRAM

Kermit,

We are pleased to report that World Food Programme ( Former Feed the children) have put us back to their programme w.e.f. January 2011.

They will supply us with food enough to feed 100 beneficiaries who are malnourished mostly pregnant mothers, babies and our clients  This is as a result of our frequent requests to Feed the Children programme, and medical reports that we promptly submit to the ministry of health and Nairobi city council.  We were requested to furnish three community health workers who will attend a seminar at Jacaranda Hotel on 16-17 December for orientation on how the food will be parked and supplied, Hendricka, Vincent our former CHW and Angeline one of our clients have been selected.  World Food Programme will send inspectors to check where the food will be stocked and see whether it will meet their hygienic standards.  The food will consist of Maize or Rice, Beans, vegetables and cooking oil. We are very happy as our needy clients will now benefit.

Also the clinic has been put on the list of other clinics that will be giving T.B. treatment.  The drugs will be supplied free but we shall charge consultation.

So excited that we could not wait for the weekly report.

Regards

WEEKLY REPORT AS AT 6th TO 12TH DECEMBER 2010

THE CLINIC

The number of patients attended to was 44 and 10 maternity cases.  All went on well without any serious complications.

During the week we generated USD 625.61 from out/patients and USD 301.49 from maternity making a total USD 927.11

The total expense was USD 631.93 mainly drugs, Njuguna’s shop and paying part salary for Florence and myself.

DONATIONS

We received with thanks from Kermit Washington through Florence the following

1,100 USD for rent

100 USD for Rosemary and

200 USD for Solomon Lab

AND

Teresa Gipson sent USD 86.84 through the bank towards the Learning Centre utility expenses.

GLIDE CHURCH- 6^th to 11th

Florence and I received Glide Church on arrival at the clinic.  We gave a brief welcoming speech and gave each a gift that we had bought.  Though majority of them spend most of their time with the children but one – Kelly was assigned to the clinic.  She spent most of the time with the clinician attending to patients and sometimes asked question relating to the clinic.  She enjoyed every bit of the stay with us

They also brought gifts for the clinic - dressings, few drugs, bed sheets, towels and many assorted items.

On 10^th there was closing meeting where Florence represented the clinic, and Glide Church invited all for the Dinner party, which they had organized.  Everlyn, Alfred, Hendricka, Agneta, Reuben and Barasa attended.  Unfortunately due to unavoidable circumstances none of the clinic staff attended, but later on were sent packed food to the clinic.

KOP GIRLS

The girls were 9 including Sharon.  Their stay at the centre was such a big blessing.  They extended their volunteer work to all sections of the centre.

-         Learning Centre – They helped in reading with them. They sang and danced with the children and Glide church.

-         Kitchen they helped our cook to wash the utensils and serve the large family.

-         Clinic – They helped in receiving patients at the reception and looking for patients’ cards.  They served the patients, cleaned the utensils and were ready to help

Monique sent USD 62.03 to offset some of the expenses while the girls were at the centre.  I passed on this money to Teacher Evelyn.

KOP girls and Sharon joined the children and Glide Church for the tour at the National Park and later on at Uhuru Park where they had lunch.

LEARNING CENTRE

Bernard is still with Florence.

The children appreciated Glide Church visit..  They enjoyed themselves to the fullest.  They learned, sang, played and prayed a lot.  Glide also presented the children with gifts such as learning materials and T. shirts.

They also had an opportunity to do home visits to some of the children’s homes.

Then on Saturday they went with the children to the National Park and ate chips, chicken and sodas.  KOP girls joined them for the trip.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Glide church handed over the USD 223.32 to the Support Group to start micro finance.  We shall do a follow-up and make sure it is well utilized.

They also bought the wares some support group had made to boost them.  The number increased to 45 and we served them with porridge.

We also announced that World Food Proramme had put us on the food distribution list from January 2010 where 100 beneficiaries will benefit.

Rosemary

December 12^th, 2010

CASH COLLECTED AT THE CLINIC AS 6^th to 12^th DECEMBER 2010

OUT/PATIENTS

DATE		USD
6TH December 7th December 8th December 9th December 10th December 11th December 12th December		118.67 74.44 81.26 98.26 86.10 117.24 49.62
TOTAL		625.59

MATERNITY

DATE		USD
7th December 8th December 9th December 10th December 11th December 12th December		18.61 86.84 24.81 32.25 24.81 114.14
TOTAL		301.46

           

EXPENSES 6^th to 12^th DECEMBER 2010

DATE	ITEM	USD
6th December	STATIONERY FLORENCE GIFT	5.27 37.22 6.51
7th December	DRUGS GLOVES PTS LUNCH	67.17 8.56 4.34
8th December	KITCHEN ROSEMARY NJUGUNA’S SHOP	7.32 62.03 76.67
9TH December	DRUGS PATIENTS LUNCH MISC.	98.26 12.40 12.40
10TH December	DRUGS PARAFFIN PHOTOCOPY DRUGS NJUGUNA’S SHOP	13.21 3.72 0.74 64.51 61.84
11TH December	PATIENTS FOOD DRUGS TRANSPORT	4.34 31.26 0.74
12TH December NATIONAL HOLIDAY	NATHAN – LOCUM AGNETA – LOCUM MOSES – LOCUM PTS LUNCH SODA (STAFF ON DUTY) MISCELLANOUS	17.36 7.44 3.72 4.96 7.44 12.40
	TOTAL	631.83

Project Contact - Sam Richard MD

I first met Kermit after he was asking for volunteers for Project Contact on his radio show, I think it was 1995. I’m not much of a basketball fan, but did know him from this Portland Trailblazer days. In the early 90’s Kermit and Michel Thompson had an afternoon radio sports talk show that I loved to listen to on my drive home from work. The show was a real conversation. The two played well off of each other, being witty and humorous with interesting things to say. The show was about sports but also so much more. Much like “Car Talk” on NPR, about cars but not really. The manager that broke them up made a terrible decision to separate them. Neither one was the same alone. Even my wife Julia who only considers something a sport only if it takes place on top of a horsed listened to them. I haven’t listened to sports talk radio since. Sports talk radio is just a bunch of screaming adolescents these days.

We started having meetings in the back room of Kermit’s sport bar and restaurant, Le Slam. Beside myself there were a few others who have been there since the beginning like Jay Donkers. We gathered medicine samples, other necessary medicines and supplies for the trip and talked ourselves into the adventure.

Our first trip was to the slum of Kibera. This slum was the local for the movie “The Constant Gardener” if you want to know what it’s like. We used this poor rudimentary school, which consisted of a dirt and weed courtyard, surrounded by corrugated steel roofed lean-tos with packed dirt floors. The school desks and benches were crude; there was no electricity, no running water or plumbing, just a hole the ground out back that really stunk.

The wonderful people of that slum more than made up for it. The kids were bright, respectful, and despite being ragged and worn, their uniforms were neat and clean. So much different than the average entitled American patient (except of course my wonderful patients). The adults came in their best. There were sick people where with just a touch of our- take for granted American medicine really make a difference. No one came in just for pain pills they were looking for treatment. I remember a subsequent trip where a poor widowed woman came in acutely ill and near death. She made her living as a prostitute, there’s really not much else to do in the slum for a woman with no skills. Her husband had died, probably of AIDS. She was weak, malnourished dehydrated and febrile and had come in because she could no longer work. She had pneumonia. But with no money, even if we could get her to the hospital she wouldn’t be able to afford the antibiotics and IV’s. I gave her some IV fluids and a dose of a common antibiotic. I thought I was sending her home to die but planned to see her back the next day for more treatment. There was nothing else we could do.

The next day that woman walked in beaming under her own power. I could hardly recognize her; Kermit had to point her out. Little did everyone know or believe how lucky she was. I think she had pneumococcal pneumonia where just a bit of the right antibiotic at the right time can give a miracle. It made me look like the Great White Doctor. I wasn’t a great or even good doctor. I just had the right medicine. It is more important to have the right resources in the right place. A mediocre doctor will do the right thing.

Back then we always stayed at the place called the Methodist Guest House. It is actually more like a minimum-security prison. Gates with guards, walls with sharp broken glass imbedded on the top, ironwork on all the windows. It’s a place where missionaries stay on the way to go and do well and give credit to the lord. We always kept a low profile there. Project Contact didn’t want your soul and allegiance; we just wanted to be in a place where a little help, either through medicine, education or food might just give you that little boost to a better life. At that time I was working for the Department of Family Medicine at Oregon Health and Sciences University. They had recruited me to start a community clinic for a place to train their residents. I convinced a couple of my residents to come with us on the next trip. One of them was Theresa Gibson MD who has been instrumental in the growth and vision of Project Contact. Theresa is a gifted and beautiful woman with a personality to match Kermit’s (I take great enjoyment in listening to them complain about each other). The medical staff realized early on that just showing up three or four times a year was a good thing but what we really needed was an ongoing presence.

While maintaining the street clinics Kermit was able to get a building built in one of the other slums named Kwangare. Over the years Project Contact’s home, The Ray of Hope Clinic has grown to have a pharmacy and laboratory (thank you Ron Artest), a clinic delivering primary care, immunizing children, testing for HIV, and delivering babies. It does a lot of good for the population there. Kermit has also established an elementary school for kids who just can’t get into a regular school. Maybe too poor, developmentally delayed, or homeless without a sponsor or guardian. About 50% are HIV positive. Project contact provides the teachers, the books and study plans, the uniforms and hot lunches daily. Certainly the only good meal of their day.

Kermit loves to feed people. He feeds a group of 85 HIV + people with their families. He figures that must feed at least 850 people a month when you take in all the relatives. This is rice, meat, and vegetables. I remember one dinner in Nairobi and Kermit going over the figures of what it would cost to feed 1,000,000 people for a year. Don’t remember the exact number but it wasn’t very much.

The medical clinic part I’ve pretty much worked myself out of a job. Florence and her staff have done an amazing job, first rate even by US standards, of providing care in the Ray of Hope Clinic. When I return there I usually go for 1 or 2 weeks of free care and medicine but I now feel they’re doing such a good job that I’m just in the way. The staff there does humor me though.

This last visit I was lucky enough to get to bring my 17-year-old daughter Katie with me. At the time it was the summer between here junior and senior high school years. I think it is so important for our young people to see the third world up close. Kate was energized by it. I made her do all the scut work- shaving heads and applying gentian violet to the heads for ringworm, applying scabicide from chin to toes for scabies. I’ll always remember her face when she got to see a delivery and take care of the newborn. I was so proud of her, she’s the only one out of all my five children wants to go into medicine and she loved it.

Nairobi is a wonderful vibrant city, perhaps the most forward in Africa as far as human rights, democratic principles and education. I enjoy visiting there, walking downtown, going to the restaurants and haggling with the street market vendors. I once got to go on a long weekend to the Masai Mara and it was spectacular. The problem is the lack of capital and jobs for the majority of people. If you are the elite, the connected or lucky enough to have a job it’s a very decent place to live. There are rougly 3,000,000 people in Nairobi. 2,000,000 live in the slums. There’s no infrastructure, water maybe delivered once or twice weekly to a community spigot, and little investment in those places to make them decent to live in. While unskilled workers work for anything, there are also professionals like doctors who make less than 300 us dollars a month.

I remember when I lived in Idaho and all the tillable land in the county would be ready to seed in 48 hours when the time was right. Big tractors, big fields. In Kenya there are small tractors but mostly 60 workers with hoes doing the tilling. Street repairs are 20 guys with picks working away. Contrast here where capital is cheap and labor is expensive to Kenya where capital is expensive and workers go begging.

On my last couple recent visits things have gotten better. A new constitution was approved. In my experience (which counts for little), people are healthier. Programs like PETA have provided free HIV testing and more importantly free HIV drugs to treat this disease that has devastated Africa. Before there was no reason to test for HIV, simply because even though there was treatment none but the most wealthy could possibly obtain it. Being an African doctor too often is an exercise in futility the doctor for the poor knows he has this and that treatment for a certain problem but its pretty much an intellectual discussion because the patient has a tough time just getting the funds to eat. At least here in America we have the opportunity to go into bankruptcy if we can’t afford an expensive treatment.

Kermit’s life from the beginning was an uphill struggle. I would write about rehabilitation and repentance but I think the Kermit NBA incident was just another tough obstacle in a life full of tough obstacles. After reading a lot and thinking about the writings of so called sports experts (doesn’t take you too far up the evolutionary ladder, does it?) I think a lot of the continual judgment and criticism after all these years is covert, subtle racism. One sees a lot of this these days with President Obama, another truly American kid whose success was based on merit rather than privilege. We’ve got a lot of angry white people in this country.

I can’t begin to understand why Kermit does what he does. It exhausts me. Why would someone like him work like a dog to support a few poor forsaken people with no resources in a far corner of the world?

The answer is easy. If we’re normal good unselfish people we by nature take care of people who are less fortunate than we are. That’s what makes us human. Kermit just goes a quantum leap farther. Kermit is a great person and human being. A topic of discussion in sports is should we make heroes out of our athletes just for their athletic greatness. When it comes to Kermit Washington the athletic greatness is just the window dressing, the rest of the man is beautiful.

He possesses all the traits that it takes to be a Great American. A work ethic second to none, unselfishness, putting others ahead of yourself and perseverance in the face of great obstacles.

WEEKLY REPORT AS AT 29th NOV TO 5th DEC 2010

THE CLINIC

This week we received 28 out patients and 6 maternity cases.

One girl from KOP – Mary came for review.

  

Staff

Ken – our security guard - his child aged 1 year had suffered malaria but he delayed in seeking for medication at the clinic so the child died on arrival and the body is at the City Morgue waiting for burial.

Everlyne – our casual cleaner has a big swelling below the ulna borne, very painful and had affected her right hand – advised to go for surgery on the 13^th December.  Currently we have hired a new casual worker.

Other Information

Glide Church – Have already arrived in Nairobi and will come to the clinic tomorrow.  9 Girls from KOP who will be volunteering both at the learning centre and the clinic will join them, they will be at the centre for 6 days.

On 3^rd December, I received USD 223.88 via Western Union from Marselline of Ray of Hope Foundation, who had been sent by Teresa Gipson.  It is a donation from Glide Church for the support group (Community Outreach) the money is in my possession to await instructions from Glide Church on how it will be utilized.

Income –

A total of USD 673.64  was received from outpatients and USD 220.15 from maternity making a total of USD 893.79.

Expenses –

There was a total of USD 497.47 that mainly include cost of drugs, water and salaries.

By 5^th today we had paid our staffs as follows:

Boyce Kitavi – clinical officer              -           USD 230.10

Solomon Asindivira – lab                     -           USD 217.66

Selestine Lombisya – nurse                -           USD   62.19 - less 124.38 advance taken

Rhoda Khasandi – clerk/cleaner        -           USD   80.84

Ken Osieno – security guard               -           USD   68.40 - less 12.43 advance taken

Evelyn Nakhungu – cleaner                 -           USD   55.97 - based on days worked

Florence Muyundo- Director                -           USD 186.57 - part payment

Rosemary Simiyu – Administrator      -           USD 124.38 - part payment

                                                                                ---------------------

                                                Total                        USD 1056.11

                                                                                ============

Note:  Solomon – lab was paid though his allowance has not been received.

LEARNING CENTRE

Okoth is still at Florence’s house, though sometimes he comes to the Learning Centre but goes back to her house in the evening.  The process of him getting an orphanage is still underway.

All the children at the learning centre are 53 including the Kileleshwa students.

BARASA – He has been busy last week trying to fix the computer tables with some carpenters and Gideon doing the painting.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

The number of attendance this week was 28 we served them with porridge.

HENDRICKA – the results on the biopsy after the operation shows cancerous – She will need continuous medical follow-ups, and might take along long time to resume her normal duties and might require financial assistant.

Rosemary

December 5, 2010

CASH COLLECTED AT THE CLINIC AS 29^th November to 5^th Dec 2010

OUT/PATIENTS

DATE		USD
29th November 30th November 1st December 2nd December 3rd December 4th December 5th December		65.92 82.71 97.01 114.18 141.29 61.19 111.32
TOTAL		673.62

MATERNITY

DATE		USD
1st December 2nd December 3rd December 4th December		19.90 26.11 92.04 82.09
TOTAL		220.14

           

EXPENSES 29^th November to 5^th December 2020

DATE	ITEM	USD
29th November	MILK DRUGS WATER	0.37 47.45 3.73
30th November	PARAFFIN	2.48 3.73 23.43
1st December	PARAFFIN	3.73
2ND December	MILK DRUGS AGNET	0.37 17.53 3.73
3RD December	WATER DRUGS GLOVES AGNETA SALARIES	22.38 14.61 6.21 2.48 178.29
4TH December	PATIENTS FOOD PARAFFIN	7.08 3.73
5TH December	NATHAN – LOCUM AGNETA – LOCUM MOSES – LOCUM PTS LUNCH DRUGS GIFT TO GLIDE CHURCH	17.41 7.46 3.73 4.35 99.34 23.75
	TOTAL	497.37