Kenya clinic provides health care amid doctor shortage
Jul. 12, 2007
NOTE: Photographs and video available at http://umns.umc.org.
By Barry Simmons*
UGUNJA, Kenya (UMNS) - In a poor farming town along Kenya's rural western border, the nearest health care provider is a nurse at St. Paul's Methodist Health Center.
The small clinic was founded three years ago next to St. Paul's United Methodist Church on property donated by the Kenyan church. It stands as a beacon of hope for those who are ill or dying with AIDS and other diseases - but has no doctor on staff.
With one clinical officer, four unlicensed nurses and a lab technician, staff members say they are overwhelmed by cases they're not qualified to treat. Together, they provide free care for nearly 300 people living with HIV. Volunteers also visit nearby homes to encourage others to get tested for AIDS.
"Why, why do we have no doctor," asks nurse Dan Rateng, "and then the patient is dying?"
Kenya suffers one of the worst health worker shortages in Africa. It's hardest on rural areas like Ugunja where few doctors want to settle. "There is a shortage," says Rateng. "Why? Because they simply go for the greener pastures."
According to the Center for Global Development, 51 percent of Kenya's doctors have emigrated so that more Kenyan doctors now work abroad than at home. After graduating medical school in Kenya, many move to South Africa, England and other nations where they can multiply their incomes 10 times.
The Kenyan government, which operates several health clinics in the region, employs just three doctors in Siaya District, which serves 450,000 people.
The dearth of available health care is among reasons that local leader Aggrey Omondi founded the clinic in 2004 after his community lost 15 people in one week to dysentery, a common ailment that is preventable with antibiotics.
"By providing this facility," he says, "we are trying to prolong the lives of the people and also make them more productive."
Omondi walks with a severe limp from a childhood cut that went untreated and eventually became infected, leaving him crippled. It is a daily reminder to him that simple medical care could ease the suffering for tens of thousands of people.
"Here we have widowers," he says, pointing to a gathering of AIDS patients at the clinic. "It's a challenging issue. How do you deal with that?"
With one out of four people infected with HIV, Ugunja has one of the highest rates of AIDS in Kenya. Omondi recently started an AIDS/HIV support group that meets each week at the neighboring church.
"Nowadays, having come together, it no longer scares us," says Sylvester Opiyo, a participant in the support group. "We've got the virus. We have to (live) with it."
"If you see those who are very sick and you get scared, really scared," says Pamea Ouko, who recently joined the group after discovering she is infected with HIV. "But when you come here together, we are taught to go on with our everyday life."
Omondi recently began work on a maternity wing for women with AIDS to provide them with drug treatments to protect their newborns. A shortage of funds has brought construction to halt, however.
Last December the clinic was so strapped for cash that Omondi was forced to release several clinical officers. The clinic would have closed permanently, he says, if the United Methodist Global AIDS Fund had not committed $10,000 to keep it open.
If the clinic closes, many of the sick will have nowhere to turn, according to Omondi. "We don't have affordable health systems in Kenya - not even health insurance, nothing like that," he says.
*Simmons is a freelance producer based in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Fran Coode Walsh, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org
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