Life in Kafunjo: Medical Care
The Project officially launched The Kafunjo Clinic on October 5, 2021 which is located on the school’s property. Bruno has hired Santrina, a trained nurse, to work in this clinic full time. We could not even begin to explain just how amazing it is for every sick child at the Project to receive quality and immediate medical attention. To give you an idea, prior to the launch of The Kafunjo Clinic, sick children were taken to the next nearest medical clinic which was about a 1 hour and 20 minute round trip. Unfortunately, not only did this clinic often misdiagnose children and prescribe the wrong treatment, they also took advantage of the Project by intentionally only partially treating children and sending them home. Thus, guaranteeing these children would stay sick and need to return for more treatment at the cost of the Project.
At times, Kafunjo has ~20 children being treated for malaria all at once. Had The Kafunjo Clinic not existed, these children would have needed to be transported to the clinic in the Project’s van, but their van can only fit about 9-10 children at a time. When more than 10 children are sick, the other half would have had to stay back at the Project feeling miserable and wait until the first group returned.
Now, when a child is sick, they simply walk into The Kafunjo Clinic on their property and receive quality care instantly. Bruno says children are now recovering much faster and are no longer afraid of getting sick! Bruno is responsible for purchasing all the needed medication and medical equipment for their clinic and pays their nurse, Santurina, a monthly salary of $130. As intimidating as that sounds, it’s been estimated that they are only spending half as much per month on medical care as they used to.
During the very first month of the launch of The Kafunjo Clinic, the nurse treated a total of 112 children at the Project and updated us with the following info:
-Malaria cases: 43%
-Typhiod cases: 43%
-Others cases: 14%
Martin, one of Kafunjo’s British advocates, contracted malaria himself during a visit to the Project in 2021. Here is his experience:
“I would say that Malaria is a creeper. It begins with aching bones and muscles, fever and shivers, running hot and cold. You feel terrible, suspecting perhaps malaria. In my case at this point I went for one of the pinprick tests locally, but it came out negative. Then I got better. A few weeks later, the symptoms returned. I thought, ‘Well, it’s not malaria.’, suffered a couple of days. Then improved again. A week later, the symptoms came on so strong and suddenly that I went from going about my business to sinking to the ground and shivering in a fetal position, rising temperature and delusions, vomiting out of the bus window on my way to a medical facility a 40 minute drive away from the project. Truly sick. Once at the medical facility, my intravenous blood test detected malaria. Intravenous medicine- three doses, 12 hours apart, and all symptoms disappeared like magic. Suddenly felt better than ever. My takeaway: (there is) insufficient primary testing availability around Kafunjo. The medicine is amazing, provided you can get to it and afford it. Malaria can easily floor you, and kill you fairly quickly if untreated. Malaria pretends it has gone away, while really it is breeding stronger numbers of parasites in your liver, ready for their next trip out into your bloodstream. It’s very strange.”