Medical Mission in Sabah~

Bismillah.

Salam, guys!

First, I'll update some story of me and then I'll write a little bit about the topic written above.

I have done my SPA interview on the 3rd Sept. It's a very unprepared interview. But it's running smoothly as the interviewers were very benign and cool. =p About 2 hours later, all of us got our confirmation letter as a medical officer UD41. So now, we are waiting for the placement and PTM course. I'm not sure it'll be either in October or December. The faster the better. But still I'm not prepared yet. -.-"
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On 13/9 -16/9 I have been on a medical mission in Sabah. It's organised under HALUAN (one of the NGOs) collaboration with Ministry of Rural and Regional Development.

Well I'm not intended to write a report. So I'll juz tell you what I've got.

Kg. Semuning

I was actually given a task for preparing and arranging the medications. But since there is someone which I thought would do better than me, I left that part to him (he's Medical Assistant) solely and helped the doctors taking the immunization history. Well, of course the immunization program for every country could be different. And for Jordan and Malaysia there's a little bit different. So at first, I was quite slow in taking the history. Actually there's some mistakes I have done in ticking the immunization paper =p But doctors there corrected it. After a few patients, I became faster. Well as people said, practice makes perfect.

The result, only a few of parents were quite educated about vaccination. Some of them never had their children vaccinated. Well, who's responsible for making this community aware about the importance of vaccination? Hmmm...
Also, some of them I can't understand their language and of course they can't understand me. Sometimes I have to change my slang to Sabahans' to make them understand what I'm talking. This I was able to do after listening many times to how they speak. But of course not that fluent.

Adult session was after the children session which also after we had our lunch and zohr prayer. For this session I was asked to measure the patients' blood pressure which is really easy because we used the digital sphygmomanometer. Actually the manual one is more accurate. And I was hoping to practice the manual one. But maybe it's easier to carry and handle they use the digital one. So I just go with the flow. Most of them have normal blood pressure. Only one or two were taking high blood pressure meds.

Finished my task, I went to the medications table to see if there's anything to help. And it's a mess there! Why? Because too many people were claiming for their meds prescription and only a person there distributing.  I felt guilty because actually my post was there helping to distribute the meds. It seemed easy. But actually for someone who've never been learn pharmacology can't give a help. At first, when I try to help me too was blurred with the doctors' writings and got confused with some abbreviations used. Also there's some meds written with generic name and i didn't know what was it. So, I asked a lot to the Medical Assistant who had been in charge for the meds since the morning. From him, I learnt the drugs name and confirmed the abbs used. Thanks to him.

After having our energy extracted, we have been fed with sumptuous seafood as our dinner. Also we got ourselves refresh and rest in a 3 to 5 star resort. (I don't know how many star because we are sponsored. =p)

Kg. Tagupi

Our team and some of the volunteers at Kg Tagupi

The next day, we offed to Kg. Tagupi. It took about 2 hours from the resort. The road there is not fully tarred. So we have about half an hour the journey of riding a horse in a car. =p

Here, I put myself in medications room with the MA as yesterday he asked me to help distributing meds for this day. We started with arranging the meds on the tables so that it's easier for us to find and give them to people.

In the morning, the patients who came for the prescription were not too many. We could handle it perfectly i guess. We even have some chat about his work which he used to work the longest in emergency but now he's in Clinic 1 Malaysia. Since then I just knew that there's no doctors in that clinic. MAs are doctors there. If there's anything complex that they can't handle then they will refer the patients to Klinik Kesihatan.

But starting about 4 o'clock, the surroundings in the room started to be crowded as people worried they won't had a chance to have their meds because we would wrap up at 5. At that time I was totally busy. I mean both of us. I tried to be fair as I tried to serve for who came first. But then, I can't even differentiate because they are not in queue anymore.

At that time, there's a woman who wanted meds but she didn't see the doctor yet. So no prescription. I told her to see the doctor first but then the MA asked me to just give the meds as he afraid that the doctors had too many patients. Also the meds she wanted were (over the counter) OTC.

"Just give the meds to them especially if what they wanted were just for scabies, sinusitis and muscle sore," he said.
"Okay then," I nodded.

Finished my work, I feel like half of my energy was totally lost. Sitting in front of a plate of donut, a doctor said,

"Penat? Ini belum HO lagi. Lebih kurang lah ni kerja macam ni. Penatnya macam HO. Cuma exclude scolding ja.."
Me: Smiling without energy. =p Pheww!

I was really amazed with one of the volunteers there. She's actually from Perlis. She got married with a man from this area and lived there. I'm amazed because she's willing to live there teaching the children even though the facilities were very lacking. Sometimes there's shortage of electricity. Their main source of water's the river. And the most thing that I can't accept that they use the river as their wastage landfill. Maybe because there'll be no one who'll come and take the garbage if they gather it. But I think it's better to burn or bury it. Hoping for better awareness for them in the future.

Btw, here was the first time for me to see bakau tree in front of my eyes. Before this, I only saw them in geography book during year 3 of secondary school i guess. =p

If you could see the root like crags at the back, then that's the root of bakau tree!

Next day, we only had a few hours to shop before our flight to Kuala Lumpur. So my sister and I just do window shopping and done while others are shopping till drop. =p It's because a few weeks before my father went to sabah too and bought some dried fish and squid and some traditional snacks.

p/s 1: Yeay! Done the writings after being postponed many times. =p
p/s 2: Yesterday got a pic with the famous author and got his autograph! Hehe..
p/s 3: Suggested movie: The Flu.