A heavy rainstorm cut short our medical team´s day of prescribing medicines, vitamins and doing chiropractic treatments for about 170 patients at Hateka outside of Accra, Ghana. By three o´clock in the afternoon, we were back at HCJB Global's Sub-Saharan Africa Regional offices after our first mobile medical clinic.
Dripping wet after hurriedly gathering medicines stuffing them in bins and boxes to shuttle to our vehicles, we considered the day. The palm shelter had not shed rain pouring down on our makeshift clinic.
Earlier in the day, International Healthcare Coordinator Sheila Leech and Lee Sonius, Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Director, joined Reverend Theo Asare, president of local partner, Theovision, for prayer. They prayed for the new well the two groups worked together to fund.
People of the community expressed their gratitude for the health and life that clean water brings. They are currently in the process of building a sanitary latrine in the village as well.
Dorothy Nelson, wife of long-time missionary doctor Steve Nelson, was engulfed with groups of singing and dancing children long before the medical team was unloaded and seeing patients. Although she was often out of sight, the echoes of laughing children and Dorothy's strong voice created a joyous background soundtrack to the cacophony of the patients in the waiting area. The pharmacy workers could see the occasional stray frisbee zinging past the waiting patients -- further evidence that Dorothy was still spreading her joy to anyone willing.
Fernando Espinosa, a family medicine resident at Hospital Vozandes in Quito, said the poverty in the Hateka is not so different from some areas of his home country, Ecuador. However, he found the enlarged spleens that indicate severe, chronic malaria was much more widespread and serious in Ghana. Espinosa found dialoging with his patients very difficult when the information was travelling through interpreters from local languages into English, which is not Espinosa's mother tongue either.
With a plastic jug, some string and soap, HCJB Global’s David Kealy, Jeremy Maller and Nate Dell crafted a water-saving handwashing station called a "tippy tap." Then the medical team readily used the simple, appropriate technology while washing hands before sorting medicines or seeing patients.
With a pick-me-up coffee in hand, the doctors and nurses took over the offices to dry and re-sort medicines and equipment to re-outfit and head back to Hateka early tomorrow morning.
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