Pills, Pills, Pills

The first day at the clinic in Tingriti I was assigned to the pharmacy tent. We actually only had a pharmacy tent for one day because during the first day of clinic it rained so hard that it flooded the tent. Hem, the guy who runs the clinic, has bags and bags of medicines that lay all around the edges of the tent. When he realized that the tent was flooding and getting all his medicines wet he begain screaming SHIT, SHIT, MY BAGS, MY BAGS, SHIT, SHIT (all with his Indian accent which was really very amusing). He is a really nice guy but he doesn't have much of a sense of humor so we all tried to hide our chuckles. Of course we reenacted the whole thing after he left for a bit.

We have been giving out lots and lots of medicines. One thing to keep in mind about the types of medicines that we have been handing out is that there is no local pharmacy (or chemist as they call it) in most of these villages. Things like ibuprofen and tylenol are really hard to get so we have been giving out a lot of it for minor headaches and various joint and body pains. Other common medicines that we have been dishing out our albendazole (for worms) and a lot of Ranitidine (think Pepcid AC) and a ton (literally) of multi-vitamins. Other than those the next most common medicines would be antibiotics. We have all different kinds and we have given them for a variety of problems including: upper respiratory infections, pneumonia, and sinus infections. From the top picture you can see that things can get pretty crazy at the pharmacy tent. There is no such thing as a line here so people crowd in and around you in every direction. The picture actually shows one of times that we weren't as busy.