MINI UPDATE:
Will post photos later, but
YOUR $$$ have bought a LARGE supply of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) kits along with enough Malarone, Chloroquine, and Doxycycline to treat at least 50 cases and 500 tabs of prescription Malarone, which is one of the best prophylactic treatments for Malaria.
The RDTs and having the meds on-hand mean they can immediately diagnose and start treatment without having to wait to get to a doctor and then go fill a prescription, a process that can chew-up valuable time, especially in children, and they don’t have to worry about having cash necessary to pay for a taxi, doctor, and prescriptions.
We have made “friends” with a local “Chemist” (pharmacist) in the nearest city (Kitale). It’s an immigrant Indian family (many businesses here are owned/run by Indians). You can count the number of white people here on one hand. It’s rare to bump into another one around here. Kitale is a decent sized city — maybe 50K population — and is a hub in/out of Uganda.
There are many benefits (and detriments) to being white here. One benefit is Chemists just hand you any prescription medication you want without question, as long as you look/act the part. Drugs are cheap here. We bought enough Malarone to treat a small army for little more than the cost of our single-prescription co-pay.
All totaled, we bought about $1K worth of RDTs and a variety of prescription meds that are relatively easy to diagnose and prescribe by neophytes like us (American doctors syncope here
). I have my EMT-B and have exhaustively researched every medication we bought, as well as consulted with my PCP at home (a good friend), so this is a little more than ad hoc medicine.
You can’t overstate the potential life-saving value of having this resource.
This is what
YOU GUYS have done!
