Church, Change, and Clinic Changes

1. Church: I was introduced to the congregation today. Fortunately, I was sitting next to Sisi Yvonne and she told me what Rev. Spiwo was saying so it wasn't a total shock when he asked me to stand up. He explained to the group that I left my family back in America to work in Guguletu, both at the Centre and at Brown's Farm Clinic. I received a nice round of applause and a bunch of smiles.



When I thanked Rev. Spiwo after the service he said it was important to let people know that others are amongst them helping to make improvements. The only scary thing for me is that he told everyone that if they have HIV they should spend some time with me. I guess I'll be expected to actually know stuff, so it's time to really study hard!



For those of you who asked about how long services last, today's was about 2 hours and 10 minutes. That was with about 10 songs, the Gospel reading, sermon, 3 testimonies, and a listing of the upcoming funerals (probably a dozen or so). American preachers have nothing on JL Zwane testifiers - it was yelling and pulpit pounding just like you see in movies, except in Xhosa.



2. Change: I didn't notice it until today, but South Africa is doing away with their cents. Everything you buy from larger retailers is rounded to the nearest 5 cents, up or down. One cent is only worth about a tenth of a US penny, and you can't really buy anything for under R1, so it's really not worth using them. Time for the US to do the same thing?



3. Clinic changes: We had some exciting news this week. We'll be starting two new programs over the next couple months that will help the patients and the pharmacy. The first is a central-fill program for people whose conditions are stable and only come to the clinic for refills. We will send their prescription orders to a central pharmacy in Cape Town, who will fill them and deliver them to the clinic for dispensing to the patients. This will reduce the workload in the pharmacy by at least 100 prescriptions a day and should lower the waiting time for patients by at least 30-60 minutes. The Provicinal Health Department has done this at 29 other clinics, so it should go smoothly for us. We'll be rolling this out by the end of May and I'll let you know how it goes.



The other program is around HIV. Right now, people with HIV get referred to the Guguletu or Mitchell's Plain clinics for their care. Because both of these clinics are too busy, Brown's Farm will be initiating its own HIV clinic on July 1st. We'll be starting slowly, with 10 patients in the first month and going up from there. This means that we'll be stocking antiretrovirals and all of the other HIV-associated medications in the clinic. All staff will be trained on HIV and its treatment starting in May. I've offered to help with that and we'll see how the schedule works out. This will be a great service for the people living in Brown's Farm and I hope it works out well.



Related to the clinic: For those of you interested in medical care here, I'm going to write a longer note about how patients are treated in the next couple weeks. It's really different than in the US, but in some ways it's more efficient and probably just as good.



4. Just for fun: Biking is huge here in Cape Town. On the weekends you see many bike clubs making their way along the ocean up and down the Cape Peninsula. Well, I shouldn't have been surprised to see one based in Guguletu. These kids are part of one such club. They have about 30 members and I've seen them riding along the township roads after school. Clubs like these are being set up to keep kids busy and away from drugs and crime. I haven't figured out a way to connect with them yet but I'm thinking about it. If anyone has ideas send them to me.



More to come.