Guest Post from Zorina

The first team of trainers left from London Heathrow on Monday 6th October. You can see how happy Tim Walsh was to leave the cold!

And here is the rest of the happy team preparing for the overnight flight to Addis Ababa and then on to Juba.


On arrival at Juba airport we were met by a whole team from JTH, James and David and luckily someone from the Ministry who got our passports stamped, otherwise we would still be in the queue! The Ministry of Health have kindly booked us into a fairly decent hotel (by Juba standards) but it is Chinese owned so money doesn’t stay in Southern Sudan and the food is virtually the same every evening – beginning to hate the sight of chicken!! After a meeting to discuss our plans with the Senior doctors in JTH and with James and David we set about our business.

Tim has set up a teaching course in Applied Physiology for the trainee doctors each afternoon but is frustrated by the Sudanese timings – start at 2pm, turn up at 3pm go home at 4pm!!

France has set up a 3 day workshop for midwives and that is running very well with 14 midwives attending each day. She is planning to repeat next week. She also delivered a baby the other day which the family decided to name "France."

Jane is trying hard to establish relationships with the psychiatric department (who didn't know she was coming.) Ward 11 is at the far end of the hospital and also accommodates patients with African Sleeping Sickness. Rooms are incredibly cell-like and the nurses are general trained on rotation. Very little English is spoken by the nurses who are all very kind and caring.

 The department is headed by George, the Senior Medical Assistant. He has the most amazing therapeutic relationships with patients who are so ill. Resources are poor, no activity rooms and no food for those without families – medication is limited. George also heads the prison wing for mentally ill, who have not offended. He works so hard to improve the conditions, which he describes as “completely unacceptable.”

Some of the medical assistant students are keen to pursue a career in mental health and Jane will be teaching them each morning. They will be dealing with all presentations in remote areas when they qualify.

Zorina is spending time trying to pull everything together, set up a training programme, arranging meetings, seeing possible accommodation sites and answering emails!!