I am heading out to Sierra Leone tomorrow, to work at Kambia Government Hosptial for 6 months.
This is part of my ‘Out of Programme Experience’ (OOPE) from GP training in the Scottish Highlands, which I have taken between ST1 and ST2. The deanery was very supportive of my decision to take and OOPE, which made the process very easy.
My OOPE began with the Diploma in Tropical Medicine in Liverpool, a fantastic course that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone planning to work in a tropical setting. It was on the course that I heard about the Kambia Appeal, who are running a long term volunteer programme at Kambia Hospital. Here is a link to their website which has lots of information about the project, the hospital and health services in Kambia.
Lorraine, a nurse practitioner and friend from Inverness, will be joining me in about a weeks time, and Hannah, a recently qualified GP from Cumbria (and one of my good friends sisters!) is coming out in March. I will be joining Mary, a colleague from the DTM&H course, who has just finished her foundation training, and Grace, who I did an International Health BSc with in Leeds 6 years ago!
I have just come back from a training weekend, which was very informative, and has given us a much better idea of what to expect in Kambia, what is expected of us, and introduced us to some tools to help us achieve this. We were also given USB sticks full of useful resources (internet access is very limited so we won't be able to google anything!).
The aim of the volunteer programme is to improve health outcomes and quality of healthcare delivery within Kambia District by empowering UK health volunteers through skill sharing to train and teach local healthcare workers, develop quality improvement tools, and provide clinical support. We will be working in the wards alongside local staff and running teaching sessions to the volunteer nursing aides, local unpaid and untrained volunteers who make up a large proportion of the hospital staff. Previous volunteers have written a teaching module which we will deliver, whilst writing the next module for the next volunteers to teach. We will also hope to explore some of the issues we may encounter, and hope to use some of the quality improvement skills learnt on the diploma and at the training weekend, to work with local staff to develop sustainable improvements to healthcare delivery at the hospital.
Sierra Leone is ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world; around 1 in 5 children die before they are 5 years old, 1 in 11 women die as a result of pregnancy, life expectancy is 47.8 years, resources are very limited, much of the infrastructure was destroyed by the civil war (1992-2002) and patients have to pay upfront for their care, and may not be able to afford life saving treatment. It will be a very challenging 6 months, but I am sure it will be a very enriching and rewarding experience.
I am also really looking forward to exploring what looks like a really beautiful country, with stunning beaches and some of West Africa’s highest mountains.
I hope to keep this blog going while I am away, but I have been warned that I will have very limited access to internet, so it may not be very regular.
If you would like to write to me I would love to hear from you. Please send letters (but not parcels, apparently they do not arrive!) to Dr Zoe Anderson, Kambia Government Hopstial, Kambia, Sierra Leone, West Africa.
This is the base I will be living in, with perfectly positioned trees for a slack line!
Lonely planet says:
But oh how things have changed. Peace was declared in 2002 and it has blossomed. Life has largely returned to normal and today Sierra Leone is one of West Africa’s safest destinations. Reconstruction continues apace, investors are arriving in droves and travellers are trickling in. The one recent event that did make headlines was a free and fair election.
With some of the most perfect palm-lined sands on the continent, it won’t be long before Sierra Leone takes its place in Europe’s packaged-beach-holiday scene, but for now visitors can have the surf outside the capital pretty much to themselves. Travel to the provinces,where roads are often abysmal and facilities usually basic (but getting better), remains in the realm of the adventurous, but with cheerful people and wonderful parks, the rewards are many.
