Baraka Projects – Facharztwissen

Baraka is the name of our clinic and is a Kisuaheli word which means blessing. It is located in Mathare Valley, one of the slums in Nairobi.

We have 6 German doctors who work there for free and arround 100 other staff members from Kenya, who are paid by the German doctors.

We have 3 different programs:

The medical center itself

The medical center itself is for outpatients only. The opening hours are from 8 am to 4 pm and the 6 German doctors treat around 250 – 300 patients daily. We have a rotating system which means that 5 of the doctors work there for 6 weeks, then other doctors are coming, and one doctor – the doctor in charge – is there for a longer time. Every doctor works with a translator because most of our patients dont speak English, but Kisuaheli or other languages (there are more than 40 tribes in Kenya and each tribe has its own language). We have a lab in the medical center where we can do: Hb, full-blood-count, malaria test, sputum test for AFB, pregnancy test, urine test, sickle-cell-test, ESR and of course all the tests for the HIV-program (CD4-count, GOT, GPT, Creatinine, Urea, …). There is a dressing room, where a nurse works and does all the dressing, treats abscesses and there is also a possibility for small surgical interventions. Then we have two rooms for patients, who get i.v.-infusions, e.g., dehydrated children. We have also a VCT (voluntary counseling and testing center), where the patients can do the HIV-test voluntary or on doctors order. There are 3 counselors working. Baraka medical center is a two-storied house: on the upper floor we have the offices of our administrator, the accountant, and the pharmacy, and on the ground-floor are the doctors rooms, the lab, dressing room, and VCT.

The feeding program

The feeding program is also very important because we can send the malnourished children there and they will be treated with plumpy-nut. The head of the feeding program is a childrens nurse, who does great work, and it is amazing to see, how the children improve after some weeks! We also provide food for the older children and adults, mainly for orphans and HIV-positive patients, but also for social cases and for different schools in Mathare. The building itself is two-storied. On the upper floor the children are treated, in the ground floor the cooking is done. To give an idea about the size of the feeding program in February 2010 there were:

124 children on plumpy nut
92 children on formula feeding
121 children on porridge
93 adults on porridge
226 children on wet feeding
134 adults on wet feeding.

School children:

44 in St. Maurus Special School
116 in St. Stephen’s Nursery School
100 in St. Maurus Nursery school
100 in St. Lwanga School

The HIV-program

The doctors from the health center send the HIV-positive patients to HIV-program which is run by clinical officers. They are Kenyans and work there permanently. Otherwise a treatment and follow-up for HIV or TB-patients would not be possible. We have 4 clinical officers and they treat around 2100 HIV-positive patients, 1500 of whom are on ARVs. The work is done in containers.

Pictures of the feeding project can be found here.