Outpatient Clinics

"Internal body heat, and my skin is moving, and I feel like someone is pulling my insides out through my throat, like so, zrrrrrp!" When I first came to Nigeria, I expected to find different diseases. What I didn't realize was that the complaints and symptoms would also be so different!

Patients begin registering in the clinic early in the morning, then sit on the long benches in the covered waiting area. After the staff leads morning devotions, the health workers begin seeing the sick. Community health workers, with two or more years of health training, see the patients first. They treat the more minor illnesses, and refer the more serious ones to a doctor.

 Just as in a city emergency room, in the developed world one never knows what to expect. Most cases are "routine," like malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, or backache. Many surprises come along as well, such as the man who arrived with a spear right through his abdomen (he had accidentally fallen on it). Or a baby who has nearly bled to death after having his uvula cut out by a traditional healer (uvula, that's the little dangling thing at the back of your soft palate). Or the man with severe burns after he used gasoline instead of kerosene to burn out his latrine.