Teaching at the Waras Clinic

This was my favorite hospital to visit. The primary purpose of our trip was to train the doctors, nurses, midwives and other hospital staff. This is an area that is completely inaccessable for the entire Winter. It's at about 9000 ft. elevation so the snowfall is heavy, temps are sub-zero for weeks on end and when Spring arrives torrential runoff makes travel impossible. These staff are out there on their own. We had a neonatologist to teach about premature children, delivery emergencies, etc. We had a Navy corpsman to assist in training in the lab. We had a preventive medicine doctor to assist in diagnosing and prevention of infectious diseases and we had two family practice docs. Dr. Hayes taught about burn treatment and I taught about skin cancer/conditions and about EKG's. This first picture has the three docs with myelf, my interpreter and a New Zealand Soldier. We all just sat down on the floor and talked. I'm pretty sure this was their bedroom. At any rate, these three were pretty sharp and things went well. It was a pleasure getting to know them and they were easy to teach. The tough part was sorting out what to teach them so we just got to talking about patients, presentations, conditions, etc. and found our way. The second picture is the same group. The third picture was a shot of the waiting area outside one of the clinics -- it was just the cooler, shady side of the building and all the mothers and their babies were gathered there. After training we always had some humanitarian aid to hand out and provided medications and supplies to the hospital.