CSPS Morning

April 10^th

I got to the CSPS a bit late around 8:15, and it was one of those mornings where everyone was there but no one had actually started working yet. I went around organizing, and grabbed the interns to help weigh and take the blood pressure of all of the women, which took around 30 minutes. We seemed pretty ready to start with the consultations, but then Major and Sali said they wanted to do a causarie (a little health lesson/talk). WHAT?! You mean the thing I've been trying to convince them to do for well over a year? Be still my heart. I had been pushing for topics like “these are the medicines we give you during your pregnancy and why” or “this is what you should bring to the maternity when you give birth” or “we're glad you're here for a consultation and here's why you should give birth here too” - something that would take about 5-10 minutes. They instead decided to explain the HIV rapid test, now that we have them available again. I assumed it would be pretty quick, since when they explain it to each individual woman it takes about 1-2 minutes max, but they spent the better part of an hour! We didn't start the actual exams until 10am, which was really frustrating for me since we all get pretty tired and cranky the longer we stay past noon. With 4 of us we managed to finish a little before 1pm, but I do hope that on Friday when we repeat this little exercise that we can either start earlier or do a faster talk about the test. After all, we have less than 10 HIV+ people in our village, several of whom are married to the same man, so explaining the treatment plan years down the road to women who are almost certainly HIV-negative seems excessive. Still, I guess I can't complain too much, it makes me really happy that they're at least taking the time to properly explain and do the testing.