A Visit to the Clinic

I wish that I would have had a camera with me today. Alissa, Dr. Ellis and I visited a clinic in Kalingalinga today. The clinic also had an inpatient ward, and I was appalled at what I saw. There are four wards, separated by curtains. They literally have TB patients breathing the same air as immuno-compromised sickly patients. They were all so sickly and thin. Alissa took it upon herself to filter through the patient log book (and no one stopped us) and almost every admission was due to malaria.

On the bulletin board, there was a hand drawn graph of the 5 leading causes of death among Zambians. In order:

1) Malaria
2) AIDS
3) Pneumonia
4) Tuberculosis
5) Diarrhea

The second thing that I saw which I found striking, a poster that talked about the benefits of circumcision. I repeat, verbatim:

1) It decreases the risk of STD’s
2) It decreases your risk of getting AIDS
3) It decreases the chance of your partner getting cervical cancer.

I couldn’t make this up. It made me so angry. This is a clinic that is funded by the government, and they are massively misinforming people. Alissa also told me that she went to a clinic downtown and there was another poster that was informing people that AIDS was created by Americans in a lab in New York City in order to kill off all of the black people. Amazing. Amazing, I tell you how much education is needed here.