After an amazing trip to India with Tini and Nick (hopefully will post about it soon) then a great month at home, I am back in the Kingdom of Swaziland. At the end of February I started my new position with ICAP, a Columbia University organization, as the clinical advisor for the Lubombo region.
Lubombo is the eastern region of Swaziland that borders Mozambique. In addition to myself, the regional ICAP team is composed of a nurse, an adherence and psychosocial support person and a data manager. We support the major hospital, Good Shepherd, and the health center, Sithobela as well as 14 of their feeder clinics. Our team provides technical assistance, systems strengthening and clinical mentoring/training in an effort to decentralize HIV care. We work closely with the Ministry of Health through the regional health management team to achieve this. About 80% of our time is spent in the clinics each month, providing clinical support/trainings as well as evaluating systems through observation and more quantitatively through quality improvement activities.
This is a significant change from my previous role at Baylor, which was more clinical focused. I am excited for the challenge and think I will learn a lot from this position. I definitely believe it gives me an opportunity to make a more sustainable impact.
As for the personal side, I am living in Siteki during the week. I have been staying with some friends who work for an Italian NGO, Cospe. I had initially planned on getting my own place, but for safety reasons have decided to stay put. Chiara, Emanuela and Stefano have been so gracious and welcoming. Now I just need to get a bed and start unpacking. Garrett's room is going to feel so empty once I move all my boxes that have been sitting in the corner of his room for the last three months! Siteki is a nice little town of about 20,000. It is even more quiet than Mbabane so I foresee most weekends I am in Swaziland being back in Mbabane. The best part of Siteki is the proximity to Mozambique, which I have not taken advantage of since being back. Worst part so far, mosquitos! The first mornings here I woke up with swollen eyes from mosquite bites. Since then I have not gone to bed without mosquite repellant. I am thinking a mosquite net might follow closely after my purchase of a bed.
1 comment:
Good to see you back online. I hope that you have a bed and mosquito netting by now -- and that you're taking the anti-malarials :-)
I'm sure this comment from me is a big surprise!
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