Some final stories about the clinic

This woman had not been able to walk for 8 months. She walked back to tell us that since she visited the clinic in September she has been able to walk. This from a treatment of vitamins and Ibuprofen and maybe the psychological boost of being treated by an American doctor?

Two men came in on the same day. They had both suffered strokes 7-8 years before and had been paralyzed on one side and in bed since. We are trying to get the nomadic people and their families to understand that they can start to be more involved in their own health care. For these two we showed their families ways that their limbs could be moved to provide a sort of physical therapy and prevent the muscles from atrophy.

Louine managed our pharmacy. After seeing the doctors, patients would return to the recieving room/pharmacy to recieve their medication from her and have it explained by Ramatu or Aicha.
We developed a simple system of marking the bags for people who cannot read, which is 99% of the people we treated.

Often whole families would come in to be treated together.

On the last day a whole group of people came from the town of Ingall. There is a clinic there, but no doctor. The commune is 50,000 square miles with 40,000 inhabitants and no doctor. That is why our visits are so popular. This group was interesting to treat because they speak a separate language that none of our interpreters knew. They are descended from a settlement created by Mohamed Askia in the 15th Century. He was the greatest king of the Songhai empire which extended from the Atlantic ocean to Sudan. On his way back from Mecca he settled some of his entourage in Ingall and to this day they speak a separate language that is spoken nowhere else in Niger.

Margaret’s treatment team.