Michelle and I getting ready for a day of site visits
It’s been about two weeks since Michelle Pannell and I returned from Ethiopia on our trip with the campaigning organisation ONE. We were there to see how foreign aid is spent on programmes on the ground, on a trip arranged by ONE.
For much of the time we’ve been back, I’ve been incredibly ill. In addition to the digestive problems many visitors on our trip experienced, I also developed a chest infection and what felt like flu on top of that.
On Monday afternoon last week I was reduced to lying in bed and moaning. A few days later I was ambulatory and speaking to others, almost like a normal person. That was because I had spent Monday morning in an emergency appointment at the doctor’s surgery. I called at 8 a.m., drove 5 minutes to the office (a distance I’d normally cycle in 10), I stopped by the chemist on my shuffle back to the car and was convalescing by lunchtime.
Ironically, when I first started feeling ill, still in Ethiopia, we were visiting a health centre. The rural centre is part of a programme to improve health facilities for rural people. The one we visited serves 170,000 people (!) who mainly get here by walking. One of the biggest obstacles to good healthcare is the distance to a health centre. What a comparison.
The dirt road we travelled on for an hour to reach the health centre
When we pulled up in our minibuses, there were lots of interested eyes peering at us — women holding babies and men wearing their cotton wraps slung round their shoulders to keep off the sun.
In the grassy area in front of the centre there stood a mud and grass hut — out of keeping with the modern concrete building behind it. This structure was set up like a traditional house, used to teach healthier practices such as keeping the animals in a separate section and segregating food storage and sleeping areas. (It wasn’t until I visited a villager the next day that the reality of the whole “sheep in your front room” thing came to life for me.)
Outside the hut at the clinic. Picture credit: ONE/Karen Walrond
At the modern building, villagers sat outside the doors on wooden benches, waiting to see the doctor (that sounds familiar). And when we stepped inside the examination room for women, my first thought was “Except for the cracked and missing floor tiles and the vinyl covering on the exam table, this could be an NHS exam room.” Health warning posters were taped to the walls and a pretty young doctor wearing kitten heels talked about the pregnancy services on offer.
The doctor at the health centre
One of our hosts with an exam table
The room just beside it was more basic: a delivery room with side-by-side two examination tables, metal stirrups and metal bowls at the end of the table to catch fluids.
To my Western eyes it was pretty shocking. But here it represents a huge improvement on the alternative, labouring in a mud hut with no access to equipment or trained medical personnel.
Women and children in the countryside are in desperate need of healthcare, including immunisations and prenatal care. This health centre is one part of a programme to get services to these remote areas. It works in conjunction with smaller health posts in rural villages that provide basic care and advice. For many villagers, this is their regular healthcare resource, the women working here the only “doctors” they will see.
At the health post
They are rudimentary, but invaluable because actually getting to a doctor or health services is one of the biggest obstacles for rural Ethiopians. They can walk for miles just to get an immunisation, treatment for diarrhoea or malaria, nutrition and family planning advice. The health posts and this health centre — funded by USAID and through a programme with Pathfinder International and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health — make the difference to thousands of Ethiopians.
We were asked to imagine what life was like before these centres and outposts were available. It wasn’t hard for me: if the nearest help for me had been a day’s walk away under a beating sun — a journey I would have had to make with a baby strapped to my back — I’m not sure I would have even been able to attempt it.
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About Jennifer Howze
Jennifer Howze is the co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about travel, family and London life at Jenography.net. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.
Thanks for transporting me back there, glad you are at last on the mend. Mich x
Thanks for ushering me onto the plane. If not for you, I’d still be sleeping on the bench at departures in Addis aeroport!
Hope you are nearly fully recovered lovely. Are you taking probiotics (the pills, not the yogurts) – they are really helpful to get your body back up to full working order after a digestive problem. (I like optic because they have different types).
I was complaining the other day about how difficult it is to book a doctors appointment and how many days it takes for me sometimes – but atleast I don’t have to walk miles and miles, and they will always see young children; we are so lucky.
We usually have to wait several days for a regular appointment, but I called and said I need to see a doctor today even if you have to work me in for 5 minutes, and they sorted it out.
As for probiotics, I’ve been guzzling them. So very essential when taking antibiotics – they ought to prescribe them at the same time.
Gosh it’s frightening to think what people have to endure just to get to see a doctor, like you say when I am feeling rough there’s no way I’d want to make a mile long walk with a baby strapped to my back. I’m not sure I could do it!
Very happy to hear you’re on the mend Jen