Over the last few months we’ve seen many changes and developments at Kamanga Health Centre - here are a few of the most important updates:

INCREASING PATIENT NUMBERS

There has been a significant increase in the number of patients attending Kamanga Health Centre over the past few months! In February we had a total of 932 outpatient department attendances and 107 admissions, a huge increase on the numbers from last year. The most common conditions treated at Kamanga Health Centre were pneumonia, gastroenteritis and typhoid.

The Reproductive and Child Health department has also seen an increase in patient numbers, particularly at the bustling under 5’s clinic. Here the children are weighed, vaccinated, and given essential medicines like mebedazole, which kills intestinal worms, and vitamin A to prevent eye diseases.  Whilst the mothers are waiting we provide them with education on topics such as nutrition, breastfeeding, and vaccinations.  In February alone we saw 519 children at the under 5’s clinic. It’s wonderful to see so many children receiving crucial vaccinations to keep them safe, even if they do make quite a racket!

THE NEW WARD

We realised back in November that we needed extra space to accommodate the increasing numbers of admitted patients. We only had 4 beds (2 postnatal beds and 2 medical beds) and we were often over-capacity, leading to inappropriate rooms being occupied such as the clinic rooms.  After an emergency meeting of the Cedar Tanzania team we made a plan and the maintenance team got to work on converting one of the waiting rooms into a new ward.  This provided an extra 4 beds - doubling our capacity! The imaginatively named ‘New Ward’ was finished back in January and has been more or less full ever since! (I’m trying not to imagine the chaos that will ensue if we build another ward - ‘New new ward’?!)

NEW STAFF

To cope with the increasing patient demand, we have employed 12 new volunteer staff members. They have settled into the team wonderfully and, alongside the other staff, are working hard to cope with increasing patient numbers. Since we have started admitting patients all of the staff have had to adapt to working in the inpatient setting- this has involved many new procedures and protocols which ensure patients are closely monitored and receive the necessary medication during their stay. This has required a huge amount of work over the last few months, but we have managed to create a system which is working smoothly!

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Kamanga Health Centre celebrated its 1 year anniversary on the 18th of January! To celebrate the big day, all the staff gathered for a post-work feast. Awards for the best staff of 2018 were given to Neema , our clinical officer, and Mussa, head of maintenance – both very well deserved! A fun evening was had – eating, drinking, and celebrating our achievements over the last year. Excited to see what year 2 has in store.