HIV outreach

A few weeks ago, my organization decided to go out into the field and conduct HIV/AIDS testing and counseling. At around 1 in the afternoon, we arrived at a nearby village to find about 40 people waiting in line to be tested. The majority of the people there were women, which isn't too surprising considering that culturally, many men don't really care if they have HIV or if they spread it. We immediately began to set up our makeshift clinic under a tree, which consisted of a few benches and the testing supplies, and began testing. 

I was considering taking part in the HIV testing until I saw how the other nurses were doing it. To begin with, the whole process was completely disorganized.  The people were in no particular order and were getting very frustrated that the process wasn't going faster. To compensate, our nurses decided to take multiple people's blood at one time... Without gloves. Quite frankly, it was terrifying to watch my coworkers do their work. They would take blood from a patients arm, (again, without gloves......), set the syringe  down on the table without a cap, and then move onto the next patient. Finally, they would put some drops of blood on the test strip, but 9 times out of 10 they couldn't remember whose blood it was. I was so nervous about the situation I decided to remain recording the data on another bench. 

Although the outreach was a little scary, I would like to think that it was worthwhile. At the end of our 8 hour day, we had tested 65 patients for HIV and found 8 to be positive, or 8%. This is a little higher than the national average of people with HIV, which is 7%. 

Unfortunately, after all that work, we were not able to supply those who were HIV positive with the Antiretroviral therapy (ARV) drugs. There are certain organizations, who with the Ugandan government, supply these ARVs to public hospitals for free. Our clinic is private, and thus we don't have access to these drugs, which creates big problems in our community. Historically, villages that lie close to Lake Victoria have higher rates of HIV/AIDS, which holds true to our village. Because we don't have these drugs, we have to refer our patients to alternate hospitals that are about 8 miles away. Most of our patients don't have the means to get to this hospital and thus are forced to suffer with their disease.