In Modest Kabango’s 60 years of life in Katanga he has seen much suffering but cannot get used to the pain he feels when he is left watching as people get weaker and die. “It is devastating not to be able to help our own people. Recently, three people have died just because we weren’t able to get them on the right medication in time. Sometimes mothers have walked for days to the clinic to get themselves and their babies tested, but we don’t have the test kits or medication needed.”
According to Modest, who is head nurse at the Mfuta Clinic in the Katanga Health Zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One of the biggest challenges he faces is that because the clinic is so rural, it takes a very long time for them to receive test results, medication and test kits. Once a mother gives birth, she is encouraged to test the baby for HIV. Unfortunately these results are not yet instant. (PCR test). The blood results need to be sent away to the nearest lab, where they are carefully assessed. For mothers in the Kasenga health zone, this is extremely challenging as results need to be sent to the lab in Lubumbashi, which is around 300 kilometres away along very difficult roads. UNICEF’s “Point of Care Intervention”, would mean that doctors and nurses would be able to do their jobs properly, so that results would be received in a sufficient time period for babies and children to be put onto life saving medication if necessary. And that ultimately the lives of many children and babies in Kasenga would be saved. “As a doctor, I am deeply challenged when I am unable to make life saving decisions in time, knowing that a child could die as a result.”
