I haven't been writing that often lately as there isn’t much exciting that’s been going on. For American Thanksgiving on Thursday we were invited a fellow American’s house for dinner, which was really lovely.
I had a lovely but quiet weekend – mostly took it easy and worked on our day hospital proposal. After traveling for so many weeks, I was really glad to stay at home, putter in the garden, and start reading my stack of new novels – I bought some in Kenya, and Claire sent me some. I started my Christmas shopping at Adama’s little artisanat stand; Adama helped me get me telephone hooked up (he’s a friend of the house owner’s nephew who manages the house). Despite being in the artisanat business, he is like a typical Burkinabé person; really friendly & open (and chased away an annoying batique seller who came running up when he saw a toubabu at an artisanat stand); we sat and drank tea, and he taught me anwali, which is an African board game (I think there are versions in most countries). I’m glad to buy things from people who are honest salesmen like that!
Work has mostly been focused on writing our proposal for our clinic; once we have completed it, we hope that BIPAI will help us identify and find the resources we need to provide the level of care we want to provide. We’ve divided up the tasks (both of the proposal and our other work) and one thing I’ve been working on is forecasting numbers of patients & necessary medications and supplies…. I just wish I knew what I was doing! Its interesting trying to put on paper what we’ve learned about the health care system and HIV care here.
The Clinton Foundation has arranged a large donation of all 1st and 2nd line antiretrovirals, cotrimoxazole prophylaxis (to prevent infections in HIV exposed children), testing reagents to provide free HIV testing for kids and a nutritional supplement. That should arrive in January and will be a huge help to our work here. The more challenging problem will be finding funding for some of the other medications for treating opportunistic infections (not to mention the regular problems of childhood) and supplies for treating children with severe malnutrition. We are trying to sneak malnutrition into our HIV clinic because, well…. how to put it diplomatically… that is the biggest weakness we’ve recognized in the general pediatrics care of children here.
By the way, the American issue of Time that has just come out (see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/current) will have two articles about BIPAI and the pediatric AIDS corps. Nothing about Burkina of course, but it does talk about the program in general.
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