The Rural Outreach Services team was up at 7am and left at about 8.20am for the Nupuru Health centre visit on the 29 /04 /09. When we arrived the patients were waiting to be seen by the team.  We quickly sorted ourselves out to the rooms allocated by the health Centre staff. Then we started seeing the patients booked for us.

We had two Australian Visiting midwives from the Highlands Foundation (Debbie & Jenny) with us that helped with screening of all antenatals. And prior to that we gave some baby packs to the waiting mothers which they were asked to bring with them during labour. This is one way of encouraging women to deliver at the Health centres rather then a village delivery without supervision.

We also handed out knitted wollen baby clothes kindly donated by the Highlands Foundation and Rotary to several children that were waiting with their mothers.

There was one delivery attended to by the Australian visiting midwives and in the true spirit of Highlands culture the mother decided to name her newly born baby boy after Debbie’s husband. Although we had to improvise during the birth our Australian friends seemed to cope very well.

The total number of patients seen on the day was about 112 (Paediatrics 4, Medical 37, Surgical 3, Physiotherapy 14, Dental 14, Gynaecology 20, Antenatals 20 and 1 delivery).

All on all we had a very productive and rewarding visit to Nupuru Health Center – we finished at about 2.30pm, had a late lunch and left to return to Goroka at about 3pm.

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