Hello from Kampala

Hello everyone,

So we've spent the last week in Kampala. Its a proper big dirty city with roads that are either in complete standstill or are terrifying in their chaotic-ness. Motorbikes (boda-bodas) are the only reliable way to beat the traffic, but they run a constant gauntlet. Im happier in our small daily bus, its slow, but at least the boda-bodas bounce off you without seemingly harming anyone.

I'm currently filling in application forms for jobs starting in August 2013. I think I'm almost set on a career in public health, and so I have really enjoyed trying to understand the east African health systems, what they can do and what they cant do, what they should do with limited resources and what they probably shouldn't do until more money/development arrives. I feel like the doctors here face such horrible ethical dilemmas all the time, from prioritising the patients they see, to things like: If someone's TB or HIV doesnt respond to your cheap first-line drugs, what do you do? Do you give them expensive second line medicines, and then you run out of money and cant treat 5-10 other people with the first line medicines, or do you just let them die? I guess we have the same dilemmas in the UK, and I guess its an eternal problem of not being able to do everything for everyone, but letting someone die just because their bug has become resistant to a first line medicine when you know there is a perfectly good second line medicine is pretty brutal.

xxx