Mobile Clinics
"Just back from three hours on bumpy, dusty roads into the hills right on the border with Mozambique. What a blast and am I ever glad I don't have to do that every day! We packed into the back of an ambulance with Matilda Nyambo and her team from Neno District Hospital and climbed up a rocky, dusty road to the hillside village of Chilimbonde in the Dambe Traditional Authority. Seems every nurse who goes on a mobile clinic is part actress and Matilda is no exception. I enjoyed watching her engage the group of 100-plus women and children and listen to them laugh at some of her pantomines.
Of course every good act needs an opener; there was singing and a lecture on the use of bed nets to prevent the transmission of malaria. Because the bednets are donated they can only be given to mothers with children under the age of a year. And yet, everyone seems to want them.
Already many people lined up in different areas under the trees. One section for weighing babies, followed by the delivery of World Food Program soya flour and palm oil. The women stretched a cloth out on the ground, a bucketful of meal was placed in a heap on the cloth and then a large cup full of oil was poured into the center of the meal, everything then wrapped up and carried home that way." - Christine Gorman
