and<\/em><\/strong> have also recently traveled internationally.<\/p>And of course the symptoms of COVID-19 are the same symptoms of regular pneumonia, which is one of the main causes of mortality for children under the age of 5. There are almost always patients of George's with fever and cough.<\/p>
I have been asked to temporarily take over as doctor in charge of the Care and Treatment Center (our HIV care center). At the end of February, Rosa, the CTC director who is a doctor from the IMA (an international Catholic mission group), went to visit her elderly parents back in Italy. She had planned to return before the other CTC doc, a young Tanzanian woman, finished her contract and left for speciality training in Dar. But now of course Rosa is stuck in Italy, so I got a new job.<\/p>
So far so good, but of course our HIV-positive patients are very vulnerable to any infection, especially those without good control of their HIV, so the effects of a COVID-19 outbreak are very scary to consider.<\/p>
I'm trying to give people longer-term refills on their antiretroviral medications to avoid as much as possible people coming into the healthcare setting during an outbreak unless it's necessary. But we also don't have enough extra supply of the medication to do that for everyone right now. We are waiting for more to be delivered soon.<\/p>
On top of everything, the running water system for the CTC has been broken for a month or more, so the clinical officer, the nurses, lab techs, pharmacy techs and me are all sharing one bucket-with-spigot, sitting on a stool above a basin in the middle of the hallway. Talk about barriers to hand hygiene!<\/p>
At our Tanzanian president\u2019s direction, churches continue to remain open, and as of today, Easter Masses were still scheduled to go ahead<\/a><\/strong>. We greatly fear that this year\u2019s Easter celebrations will be massive virus-transmitting events that will usher in full-scale outbreak here.<\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,22],"tags":[483,530],"yoast_head":"\nFears about what is coming in Tanzania - Maryknoll Lay Missioners<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n