Infection Control.

This has been a week of safety precautions...

-First of all I'll go into a little detail about my service placement. As part of the curriculum for my service-learning class I spend 6 hours at a site in the community. My assigned location is at a pediatric hospice... When I first heard those two words together I just cried. Something about kids and hospice... it just shouldn't go together. Before my fist visit I knew absolutely nothing about the organization. Apparently it used to simply be a hospice. Period. After parents died as a result of AIDS their orphaned children went to this place so they could be comfortable while they were in the end stages of their own life. Thankfully this isn't quite the case anymore. It's evolved into a really great agency. About 50% of the kids are HIV+, a few others have other terminal illnesses, and the rest were brought in as a result of abuse or neglect or something along those lines. Many of the kids have suffered from severe malnutrition, many have fetal alcohol syndrome, TB, etc. In the last few years they've introduced the HIV+ kids to ARV treatment. From what they tell me it's been very successful and they now have very few deaths (about 10% instead of 100%). With most of the kids you can tell they're sick. I think it's probably a combination of the side effects of the medicines they're on and their weak immune systems. Some of them are tiny, some are really delayed developmentally, many have a constant ear infections, almost all have nasty runny noses, swollen abdomens, some of the worst diapers i've ever seen (and I've seen some nasty ones)... it's hard. They can't tell us much about the kids due to confidentiality but I don't know if I could handle hearing what they've been through so maybe it's better that way.
I go three times a week for two hours each time. For the first hour I simply play in the nursery where they have about 25 kids from birth to two years. During the second hour I go with another student from my university into a smaller room with four of the older children. Our job is to get them stimulated and socially engaged to the point where they can move out of the nursery into the other half of the building with the "big kids". These kids are pretty behind developmentally so this will be a big task... I'm really excited about it though. They're really good kids.
It's interesting to go from working at Daycare facilities in the U.S. where there are millions of safety precautions and very few infected children to South Africa where there are very few safety precautions and many, many infected children. One visit from DCFS and I think the place I'm at now would be shut down forever...

-and apparently I've come to South Africa in the middle of a pandemic... or something. Last week was the first death in South Africa from Swine flu and he happened to be a student at my university... living on my campus. Needless to say there has been a little panic here. One of my roommates has a confirmed case of swine flu (and he's taking it like a baby) and five others have some kind of flu. Luckily they've quit testing for swine flu since treatment is the same no matter what. We have a running tally on our white board to keep track "Swine flu: 6, Pool House: 5". I may be on the loosing team but it least I'm not sick. Don't worry about me I'm taking vitamins and drinking lots of water and washing my hands.

I don't want this to sound like a negative post because it's not... that's just whats going on here. I'm loving South Africa and I'm learning a ton. Even if I get swine flu and can't leave my bed for a month I'll still be happy I'm here. Plus there's some good news..
-As of today the exchange rate is the highest it's been since I've been here. (Yay for the U.S. dollar being worth more!)
-I have a great small group made up of mostly South Africans.
-Tomorrow I get to sleep in later than 7am.
-I had tons of fun with Amanda over the weekend.
-Monday is a federal holiday so there's no class. Happy National Woman's day on Sunday!
-The weather is supposed to be good this weekend :)


Life is good.