Philippines 2016: Day 3

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Our clinics begin. The team was up and ready to go early- 6:30 breakfast and out on the Jeepney and trucks for departure at 7:15. The mayor has provided many things for the team including security support, public health nurses, emergency response staff and the transportation for the team and our supplies.  We have a 20-person jeepney to get us around which is like an open-air truck with bench seats. We pile our hockey bags on top and tie them down…. It is really nice to travel with the warm breeze blowing.  Some of the team (Gloria, Lillian and Jennifer) are hardy and prefer to travel in the back of the pick-ups that provide support.

Today was an unusual clinic day. We had two clinics booked – in Espinosa in the morning and St. Teresa in the afternoon. Both clinics were in schools – and St. Teresa was the school that Anabelle attended.  It was a very busy day with large crowds and a lot of kids for fluoride. We saw 260 patients in the morning, plus 172 fluoride and in the afternoon 420 in the afternoon with another 127 fluoride.  We are asking the mayor’s staff to organize one clinic site per day and bus people to us- which is much easier than taking down and putting up the clinic due to the lost time seeing patients.  We have two clinics again tomorrow – but after that it will be one location per day.

The team is coming together and the new staff to the clinic format have jumped in. The flow of patients was excellent with all the support we had. The mayor and his team stopped in to check on us and are bringing in another dentist and MD to help us manage the large numbers turning up for the clinics. In the afternoon we did not have a doctor, but our nurse practitioner Allison and pediatric specialist Lorna stepped up to cover.

All the stations were swamped with high numbers today and we definitely need more supplies which Anabelle’s family are sourcing for us.
As we found last time, there are many very young patients with hypertension, some skin conditions and general health issues. We did see a very ill young man with a facial lymphoma that we are hoping to help more- his father is bringing him back to clinic next Monday. Another child has cotton seeds in his ear- we tried to flush out but were unsuccessful. We will try again on Thurs.
The team had a swim after clinic – then dinner and off to bed early. It was a great first clinic day.