News from the Mennonite Mission-Guinea Bissau                         July 2012

The Clinic

Walking into the clinic waiting room at 9 am on a weekday you will see perhaps 15-20 people who have come for medical attention: a woman with pain in her neck, spine, and chest, a two year old with impetigo sores on her neck and around her mouth, a six year old epileptic, a middle aged man with a head wound, a twenty year old woman wondering if she is pregnant, and a new-born with diarrhea. The clinic is open daily (except Sunday). In a typical week we will have up to 200 people coming to the clinic for medical attention. Most come from villages within a 15 mile radius but quite a few are traveling as much as 50 miles. Our reputation is getting to be country wide!

Just a few years ago, before the Mennonite mission came to Catel, most of these people and hundreds more like them would have received little or no medical care. Today we have progressed to where we have full-time medical professionals, basic medical tools and a reasonably well stocked pharmacy.

Moving from the waiting area into the consulting room is where the patients begin to see what it is like to get compassionate medical attention. The nurse or other medical staff asks routing questions, come up with a probable diagnosis and outlines a plan for treatment.

Often the treatment plan falls short of the patient’s expectations because in most clinics and pharmacies the health care providers use a shotgun approach with a prescription for an antibiotic, a pain pill, multivitamins, malaria pills and a laxative. If they have less than four kinds of medicine to take, the patient feel somehow cheated. Sometimes our patients are told to just drink lots of water, put a warm towel on their aching muscle and eat moringa powder. This is really bewildering to someone who came expecting to bring home a small bag of medicines.