Medical Clinic

Bonzo the nurse standing in the pharmacy

The medical clinic at VOH was very interesting to witness. The clinic has 2 nurses that work there regularly and occasionally VOH will hire doctors to staff the clinic for a week or two at a time. While we were there, 2 local doctors were hired for the week. The villagers all know when the doctors will be at the clinic, so people come from far distances and wait all day to be seen...and of course, some people will not be seen. The patients are triaged at the gate and then they still sometimes wait all day. The clinic is very basic. The big room is divided into two exam rooms (with barely any privacy) and there is also a basic pharmacy. The following pictures are some of the injuries/illnesses that we saw come through the clinic. Some things are easy to treat, but sometimes...there's not much the doctors can do with so little resources in Ethiopia. Very sad.

This teenage girl had a seizure and fell into a fire pit. Her arms were horribly burned. The injury happened a week or so before and she came back to the clinic for dressing changes. As you can imagine, she was in extreme pain! Burns are not easy to treat...and definitely not easy when the conditions are not ideal.....very dirty, unsanitary....it'll be a miracle if she doesn't get a major infection.

This young man had a soccer injury and now has gangrene in his leg. He walks fine and he said it doesn't hurt much, but it's just eating away at his leg. Ahmed, the other nurse cleans the infection every few days. Again, it'll be a miracle if his leg heals without further complications.


This mother brought her sick son to see the doctors. After a simple exam and discussing his symptoms, the doctors were pretty sure he has leukemia. Getting blood work and further testing is not very accessible, so I'm not sure what this woman will do. The poor boy looked so sick, it's just heartbreaking to see the lack of services that are so easy to get here in America.

We gave him a toy car...if only that would make it all better...

Most of the kids are very dirty. They don't bathe much. So when the kids see the doctor and the doctor says "this kid needs a bath" or if they have scabies, then we helped bathe and clothe the kids.

After the bath they get new clothes (and sometimes flip flops, hat, and blanket). Every mom wanted their kids to get a bath!

Happy to be clean!

This woman brought her son to see the doctor because he is almost 2 years old and he doesn't sit up, crawl, talk, or walk. Obviously she knew something was wrong with him and wanted to get him checked out. Basically the doctors said he's got physical and mental disabilities and really....there's not much that can be done. There's no physical therapists, no speech therapists, no special schools to help children with learning disabilities. Again, the mother will just have to deal with this news and continue on.

This guy needed an IV, so Bonzo just set it up outside the clinic on the grass.

This woman was carried to the clinic on the bed because she was too sick to walk.

Overall, I have to say I was impressed at how the clinic functioned. They were very effecient and actually have more supplies and medications in the pharmacy than I thought they would. The villagers were appreciative of what care they did recieve and the staff were wonderful. The staff do the best they can. They work with what they have and make it work. They don't know any different, so to them, this is how a clinic functions. The people of Kersa Illala are actually lucky that they have this clinic available. It's way more than a lot of places have.