Luke Maillie ’18 (physics-in-medicine)
On Friday, June 10…
I only settled in Shirati on Tuesday so I haven’t had the chance to do any interviews yet, but I should have at least a couple scheduled for next week. The reason I didn’t get to Shirati until Tuesday was because I was staying with an oncologist from Duke Medical school, Dr. Kristin Schroeder. She runs a non-profit called ICCARE which treats pediatric cancer patients and makes sure they can afford their treatment by paying the costs that families can’t cover.
I stayed with her and followed her around while she worked, because she works at Bugando Hospital, which is the hospital that Shirati (and all of the Lake Zone) refers to. Since my project is about trying to understand cancer referrals, I wanted to try and understand it from the other side as well. While working at Bugando, I spent most of my time in the newly constructed oncology building- and it became clearer why the referral process is complicated for cancer.
As I said, I haven’t had a chance to do interviews yet, but I did get a chance to talk to an ex-pat doctor who has lived here for 40 years and runs a private clinic. She refers the pediatric cancer patients for all of Shirati. That is, any pediatric cancer case even at Shirati hospital is referred to her for further referral. She is brilliant, and it’s great that patients are being referred, but at the same time it is rather disappointing that this has to happen outside of the public sector.
Finally, I just wanted to say that Swahili is going pretty well. I can hold a conversation now with the nurses and my housekeeper and they only laugh at me once in a while.