Today we spent the whole day at Makindu Hospital. It is a public hospital situated in Makindu, as a sub-county hospital as part of the greater group of hospitals in Makueni County. It’s apparently one of the bigger sub-county public hospitals due to the local population size.
We talked with several staff members, including the hospital administrator, Dr. Darren Kasanga. He arranged for all of our meetings at the hospital, including one with Dr. Mary (a different one from the one we met yesterday!), an OB-GYN here at the hospital, a group of four biomedical engineers who repair the medical equipment here when it breaks, a general surgeon, Dr. John, who discussed his experience with laparoscopic surgery and his desire to do it here. Makindu Hospital currently does not do any minimally invasive surgery due to the cost of equipment, and the general lack of interest from the community. It was interesting to learn how the lack of MIS is not even a big problem for them, as they have other more relevant concerns.
Dr. Kasanga also gave us a lecture explaining how the public health sector in Kenya works, which was incredibly fascinating. There are many interesting factors regarding how leadership works, how different types of insurance are dealt with, how doctors' salaries are decided, and so much more.
We also toured the nearby Kenya Medical Training College campus and talked to the principal, who showed us their skills lab. It was a rather empty because most of the students were preparing for exams, but we could still see some of the equipment they use to train.
We then went to dinner with our four contacts from JHPIEGO. We had a large feast of a variety of Kenyan food, including nyama choma, traditional goat meat meal, which was excellent!
Also, it happened to be Freda's birthday, so everyone surprised her with a cake and a celebration! The lyrics to the birthday song they sung in Swahili are quite funny. One verse translates to: "This isn't ugali, this is cake!" They then smeared frosting over her face while she was cutting the cake! It was quite funny.
It was a very nice day overall. We gained very useful insight into a sector of the Kenyan Healthcare system that we never knew much about, and had a great feast and celebration.