About Hospitals

One Sunday morning Mbise called me very early because a man was gonging and calling 'Hodi!' at the gate. When I went down there, I met with two young men I did not know and the asked me to take a woman to hospital as she was in labour.

It was still dark and I remembered that Loti had advised me to be careful because a 20 tonne lorry had been attacked by bandits, so to be cautious, I told them to return in an hour with the woman and Tsh2500/-. [I could not pick her up as she was across the river.]
They were back in 20 minutes and I had not finished my ablutions, but Mbise called to say that she was in a bad way, so I hurried out with the Toyota.
She wanted to go to Tengeru Hospital and I hurried as there was not much traffic.
It was lucky I had told the young men to bring money as the woman would not be attended to until payment was made for rubber gloves and cotton wool. The poor woman could not walk, so I helped her into the hospital where the nurse gave her a slap for crying out!
The baby was later delivered by cesarean and we returned mother and child home some few days later.

There were several hospitals in the are and Tengeru was only about 15 minutes away. Tengeru Hospital was a government hospital and while few hospitals have abundant resources the one at Tengeru served a large population well.

Nkoaranga Hospital was also only about 15 minutes away and is a Lutheran Hospital administered by DME. Nkoaranga was a respected hospital used mainly by Meru people and served the hill area well.

The Catholic Infirmity at Kilala was small but with dedicated staff - mainly nuns I think with no actual doctors [from what I saw].
There was another small hospital to the East of Usa River and I cannot remember the name - I only took two people there, one with a suspected broken leg. It too seemed to be a good hospital.

The main Meru Hospital in Arusha was a large government hospital serving a large population and I delivered a good number of people there - some referrals and for births the local hospitals were not allowed to deliver a woman's first child, or her, I think, third, so it was necessary to go to the larger hospital.

KCMC at Moshi was the largest and most respected hospital in the wider district and while I was not required to take people there, I helped finance some.

Salean Hospital at Ngaremtoni is also a Lutheran hospital with good facilities and seves mainly the Maasai people in the area. The also carry out outreach work.

There are many private hospitals that are businesses and while we attended some of them, they were too expensive for the rural population with whom we lived and worked.

There are also many clinics of various sizes and staffed by people who are less well trained but never the less carry out valuable primary care. We dealt with these people on a regular basis and respected their work. But I can tell you that their life was not easy!

There are also many dispensaries dotted around in most areas and while today the dispensation of drugs is more regulated, while we were there most medication could be easily obtained. Even small shops [dukas] could sell malaria treatment.
Of course some of the drugs [dawa] were somewhat dodgy making me very careful especially when giving advice to people.

Myself, I attended a hospital run by a white guy [no name here] and he prescribed two drugs and on reading the label, I found that taking the two drugs together could cause cardiac arrest! This guy had been recommended to us by our then Agency rep.

There will be more on hospital visits.