NHS Direct - East Africa style

Boards like this, nailed to roadside trees, are used to advertise all manner of services across Nairobi be it renting a property, getting your fridge fixed, sorting marital disharmony, finding love. You name it, someone with a mobile phone number will be able to help. This guy has a few boards on my route to work with long lists of how he can help - this is his summary - and claims to be able to sort out pretty much any problem, although not fridges as far as I'm aware.

I used these boards in my house hunting efforts earlier in the year but I have yet to seek medical advice via this route - we get a pretty good health package through work and thus far have avoided any major illness in the family although a couple of Tim's colleagues have been pretty unwell. But we had our first direct brush with Kenyan healthcare last sunday when Matthew's attempt to create a kitten house with his friends using only cardboard boxes and a bread knife ended in four stitches and 3 hours hanging round in a clinic. At least it happened whilst with friends from medicins sans frontier who took the blood in their stride, phoned a friend for local clinic details and generally kept me and matthew calm, even if the bandaid they produced wasn't quite up to the job!

To be fair to the kenyan private healthcare system, we only had to wait so long because, having been completely calm immediately after cutting his hand, panic kicked in when the doctor moved towards him with a needle and he kicked out, with a very well aimed boot to the poor doctor's groin. The doctor understandably retreated and gave Matthew plenty of time to calm down. But all was well after that, the hand is healing rapidly and Matthew is looking forward to resuming his cricket season next week. And our friends were relieved they only had bandaid available!

Prior to that our only near miss with a hospital was a couple of weekends ago when katie shoved a very large plastic disc up her nose for reasons that remain entirely unclear and then couldn't get it out again. Tim's patience and DIY skills came to the fore - it was however slightly more than our lunch guest had bargained for.

But whilst I haven't felt the need to resort to astrologers for healthcare I have picked up some local views on the best prophylactics and remedies for various ills that prevail In the region. I'm not qualified to recommend any and readers who choose to follow this advice do so entirely at heir own risk. But I thought I would share them with you anyway.

A diet rich in Camel meat and milk keeps malaria away according to some Somalis I was talking to recently;

Putting the kids' school sun hats in the freezer over the weekend will kill any lurking nits;

An Ethiopian friend told us all Ethiopians hate drafts and wrap up against them even in equatorial heat as drafts bring all sorts of disease;

A pretty standard Kenyan approach to treating fertility problems is to get an extra wife;

Sugar is a good and healthy thing and you can't have too much of it - 2 to 3 large spoonfuls is the minimum required for any hot drink. 7 heaped spoons is the most I've seen go into a single mug of coffee.



Anne