What would you do if you planned an event for 20 and when you turned around, 50 folks were waiting outside? While it wasn’t a party that the ACN Satellite Clinic volunteers were hosting, this is exactly what the team experienced during the July clinic day held in the Kotebe neighborhood of Addis Ababa.
The ACN Community Satellite Clinic was established as a mobile monthly medical clinic, designed to provide free medical services to families who would otherwise not have the funds to receive care. With the cost of medicine and medical care soaring in Ethiopia, few families can afford any type of medical intervention and see even the most treatable of infirmities turn into debilitating afflictions. With a small budget supported by ACN, medicines are purchased and the clinic pushes on to provide whatever help possible.
So, on a hot day this past July, the clinic volunteers consisting of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals, anticipated treating the 20 children whom they had invited to attend the clinic, all of whom were experiencing some level of sickness or discomfort. As is the case in most small communities, word traveled quickly that the clinic was coming – doubling the numbers waiting to be seen. The team had to quickly triage the group, sending 20 home with less severe illnesses and serving 30 with symptoms requiring more significant treatment.
Can you imagine having to turn away a child from receiving medical care, simply because there was not enough medicine to go around?
Not an easy task for these dedicated clinic volunteers, but necessary, nonetheless.
While medicine does work wonders, even the provision of the most basic needs can make a huge difference in the lives of these children. As the staff worked through the patients, the team noticed that many of the children were shivering, sweating, and extremely listless as they waited. As they spoke with the children, it soon became evident that many were shivering because they had not eaten – they were hungry – missing breakfast and countless meals before. How many of us could handle standing next to a child who is so malnourished that it causes him to shiver? This emotional scene was quickly managed by the team, as they purchased biscuits rich in carbohydrates…and the change in the children was miraculous.
Maybe the most challenging event of the day was seeing the same children from 4 months earlier come back with the same afflictions – all because the medication needed exceeded the monthly budget. Yet now, without the necessary treatment, the conditions were more dire, and the budget was still not sufficient. How do you walk away from a situation so dire? The answer is that you don’t. The ACN team pooled resources and found the means to purchase the medicines needed to treat these most severe cases.
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