the hospital clean room

Had an interesting discussion with the main pharmacist in the clean room. They have no hood (this includes for mixing chemo) and the conditions basically would not be considered acceptable anywhere in the U.S. - but it is this or nothing, so they do the best they can to keep things clean and sterile. Everything is prepared on as needed basis - nothing ahead of time because it might be too difficult to keep sterile or it may go bad. They have requested a laminar flow hood and hope to get one soon.

water in Ghana

water in Ghana is sold in plastic sachets. this is 'pure water' which has been filtered and is safe to drink. if you are more discriminating you can buy bottled water for ten times as much (literally - this bag is 0.05 cedis and a bottle is 0.50 cedis) - and honestly i think the sachets taste better than the bottled water.

Lake Volta

Lake Volta is a huge manmade lake (the largest in the world I believe). It runs up much of the eastern side of Ghana. During the National Drug Safety Campaign, we stayed in a port town called Yeji in the Pru district. It is the northern terminus of the once weekly ferry from Accra. The morning that we arrived in Yeji we took a ferry across the lake to the more remote Makango on the eastern bank of the river.

a broom

I have seen one conventional handle style broom since coming to Ghana (and this was in the big teaching hospital). Most brooms are much more simple – a collection of tree needles fastened together.

Kintampo falls

The National Drug Safety Campaign wasn't all work and no play....on Saturday on our way back from Pru district we stopped at the Kintampo waterfalls for some fun. I ended up a trifle bit more moist than I had originally intended. We actually climbed up under the waterfalls - there is a little ledge that you can sit on if you can fight against the force of the water coming at you to get up there. The falls were hours of fun.

All mic'ed up and ready to go

There were over 700 kids at this school to listen to our drug safety talk. We started with the megaphone (seen on the table) but it wasn't loud enough so they brought in this microphone and portable speaker (also seen on the table) so that all the students could hear us.

Dinner in Pru district during the campaign

We were fortunate to be well proved for in regards to housing and meals during the drug safety campaign. The local health district director arranged for us to be housed in their guest house and to have meals provided for us on every day (except the weekend days that we were there). Each day a truck would pull up to the house and deliver breakfast (tea and bread), and then lunch (usually fish and rice, or chicken and rice), and dinner (ranging from more rice & meat to fufu, banku, or ampesie). We got very lucky as I've heard that some other groups did not get very good food throughout the week.