Last week in Africa

Last night we enjoyed a delicious dinner prepared by none other than our resident chef, Shant. We then sat around looking at pictures and laughing about past memories.

Thursday night we went out to dinner with Fatima. We went to a really nice Indian restaurant and all got dishes to share. It was sad to say goodbye to her; we love her...and she basically wants to adopt us as her own...so we will miss her! I am sure we will stay in touch.

Tuesday night was so much fun. Like I said before, it was Angela's last night, so Simoni made pizza and salad and Shant, Katherine, Sammie & Katie made tortilla chips and guacamole and Shant made no-bake cookies...so we had a feast! Ang and I tried to help make the chips, but I think we spent more time taking pictures with our aprons on than actually helping. We had 6 of the friends that we have met over here over for dinner, and after dinner we sat around the couch playing guitar (Tom and Angela played), singing and talking. What a nice last night for Ang!

One thing that I forgot to write about thus far is health passports. Every patient has what is called a health passport. It is a little book that looks like an actual passport that has all of the patients health history in it. The poor patients that we see do not have a "primary care doctor" that has all of their medical records. Patients can not just call up their doctor to have their records transferred to the hospital. The idea of the passport is that since most patients live far from the hospital and may travel to many different doctors that will not be able to talk to each other they can just carry their medical records with them. When patients arrive at the hospital the doctor should be able to ask for the passport and from it learn all about the medical history of the patient. When a patient leaves the hospital the doctor writes the discharge summary in the book. The doctor will write the medications that the patient is being sent home on, and the diagnosis of the patient. The problem here is that there is a real stigma attached to a diagnosis of HIV. I never saw a patient fake or edit her/his passport, but the rumor is that patients with a HIV positive diagnosis will change their passport or steal someone else's passport so they are free of the dreaded diagnosis. The whole health passport idea is such an interesting concept. I always wonder if something like it would fly in the US, and while I think it would be cool, I suspect it would not work. Here I really have not seen patients drug seeking or going to the doctor when they are not really sick like I have seen in the US. I wonder if patients in the US would fake problems or change their book for attention. It also seems like not having the passport leaves some of the power of the medical world in the hands of the medical professionals, and keeps the general people at the mercy of the medical professionals. Right now, patients here go to the doctor when they are honestly sick...very sick. I wonder if this country was a little more well off if patients would go to the doctor with simpler problems and then possibly take advantage of their unlimited access to their health history. Just something I have been thinking about...

Well, I have to get going. I will do one more post this week. So sad that my time here is almost up.