Mission to Malawi: Day 14-16 Pothawira Clinic

Peter and Emma Maseko the lovely
family I stayed with who run the Pothawira
orphanage and clinic

Days 14-16 were spent working in the Pothawira clinic in Salima, Malawi. Several hundred people would come per day some traveling great distances to receive medical attention. The district hospital in Salima is frequently out of medications and many patients look to outside private clinics to get help.

My clinic room

My consultation room

Henry the clinical officer helping me
with translation and standard
Malawian treatment regimens

an infected leg wound on a young
girl

One of my not so happy patients in the clinic

A young patient with chicken pox

Snake bite one week old, pretty sure that's
a tendon hanging out of the larger wound!

Peter and some of the locals in the clinic
who have donated rice to the ophans

Impetigo, incredibly common among the
village children

Ultrasound machine at the clinic
which unfortunately cannot be used
as it does not have a voltage converter
as it costs 40,000 USD

JC was brought to the hospital
after his mother died enroute while
delivering the him. This is very common
and is one of many reasons there are
many orphans in Malawi.
His extended family did not have the means
to pay for formula to feed him.

Some of the largest abscesses I have ever seen
this boy was 2 and had a large abscess behind his ear

Several of the orphans from Pothawira

A trip to Salima District Hospital, proved to be quite dismal. There are several patients crowded together, there are approximately 400 deliveries per month so women cannot stay more than 24 hours post deliver. For C-section deliveries they can stay up to 4 days. The pediatric ward this time of the year is on the brink of becoming overcrowded as the malaria season starts. The pediatric ICU differs from the pediatric ward since it houses an oxygen tank for the children.