Bangladesh, Day 2: Emergency clinic

Emergency clinic. One of 6 Hope Foundation clinics in the refugee camps.

Each day, the van picks us up at 7:45 am and we drive 1.5 hours to the camps. The drive takes us through the countryside, nearly to the Myanmar border (we were so close that my phone thought we were in Myanmar). The drive is bumpy, winding, and full of abrupt stops and starts, as we weave through endless tom-toms, vans, people, and cows.

Arriving into the camps we start seeing NGO banners — UNFPA, UNHCR, Feed The Children, Medecins San Frontieres, Red Crescent. There are two 24 hour emergency hospitals in the camps (as far as I know at this point) — MSF and Red Crescent.

Hope Foundation (the Bangladesh organization that we are partnered with) has 6 clinics in the camps. The clinics are open from about 9am until the last patient is seen, usually around 4pm. All volunteers must be out of the camps by 6pm.

I spent today at Emergency Clinic. This one is one of the most accessible of Hope’s clinics; it’s on the main road.

Clinic is closing up for the day. When we arrived in the morning, there were about 80 people in this waiting room, many of them women and children.

This particular clinic treats all kinds of ailments and does mainly primary health care. Inside, there are 7 ‘rooms’. Two of the rooms are reserved for midwives.

The bed in our midwife room, where we do exams, listen to baby’s heartbeat, and palpate baby’s position.

Autumn, one of our volunteer midwives (left) and Selma, a Bengali midwife (right), in the midwife room. Photo posted with verbal consent.

I spent today doing prenatal appointments in room 5 with Moly, one of the Bengali midwives. We saw 18 patients, most of them pregnant.

Some of the Bengali midwives. Moly is wearing the bright green hijab. Photo posted with verbal consent.

There are 22 Bengali midwives working in the camps on a 2 month clinical rotation. After their time is up, they will return to their homes throughout Bangladesh, to find jobs. They are in the process of taking their final exams to become fully credentialed midwives. They are all so sweet and lovely, and they had a great time laughing at me for asking how to say things like “pee” and “poo” in Bangla (hey, a midwife has to be able to talk about these things with her patients!).

Speaking of pee and poo… the clinic bathrooms.

Hope Foundation tom-tom. There are a handful of these ready for our use should we need to transport patients to other parts of the camps — for example, to one of the field hospitals.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and the prime minister of Bangladesh will be visiting the camps, so we will likely steer clear and stay in town. Monday we’ll be back in the camps. I am hoping to visit some of the other clinics and get a better sense of where things are. There are miles and miles of camps that aren’t here close to the main road. Stay tuned.