Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Tshabong Day Trip

Yesterday I flew to Tshabong for an outreach visit.  Tshabong is located on the eastern portion of the southern border with South Africa, as a result many people here speak Afrikaans.  It is the administrative capital of the Kgalagadi District and is located in the Kalahari Desert. The day was sunny and hot.
 
Along with two other physicians, a dietician, diabetes nurse, and ultra-sonographer, I was part of a team from Gaborone which flew to the local hospital. In the morning I rounded on the hospital inpatients.  Then I joined the other pediatrician in the IDCC (code for HIV) clinic where we worked with the nurse prescriber seeing children on ante-retrovirals.  The role of the pediatricians when they visit Tshabong is to provide teaching and mentoring to help the local staff of medical officiers and nurses to provide better care.

I'm starting to realize how well the Botswana health care system has responded to HIV and provides care for citizens. There do not seem to be any fees for health care services for Botswana citizens, as well ante-retrovirals and all other medications are paid for my the government. More thoughts on this later...

At the end of a hot day (no air conditioning here), I grabbed a late lunch at the local restaurant.  Chicken stew with rice and beets.  Mmmm.  Then we hopped back on plane (roasting hot inside from sitting on the runway all day), took off from the dirt runway, and flew back to Gabs.  Overall a very interesting day.

  Tshabong from the air.

1 comment:

  1. Good to hear of the free meds. Make a note to tell us later about the standard of living there and the affordability of free meds for citizens.

    This is interesting!

    ReplyDelete