Week 3 already. This week started with a manic Monday! A day at the city health office, on arrival all the staff are in a meeting and don't come out until about 9.30. The surge of people for the animal bite centre, only open Monday and Thursday morning was huge as everyone tried to hand their piece of pPer in - there seemed to be no process to it.

Dr Palay (assistant medical officer) tells me he saw me in Cebu over the weekend - I didn't see him!

As they get started (older people prioritised first, then babies, then everyone else) it's like a production line. Between the two doctors (to be fair mostly Dr palay) they see over 100 patients in 2 hrs.

In the afternoon I attended their kick off meeting for those people who have 'surrendered' themselves as drug users, youngest is 16 and has been using for 2 yrs! Let's hope they all keep attending.

Tuesday - medical mission to dakit, an area just south of central Bogo City. A quick rain storm makes it very humid! Along with it being very busy!! We ran out of as orbit acid drops....

Wednesday- I'm spending the day seeing what they do on one of the other projects and visiting the hospital in Bogo. They have a new out patient department where one doctor sees patients during working hours. He's supported by about 3 nurses., fractured radius, several tetanus shots, one minor op etc. the afternoon it's a quick visit to A&E (all 3 beds of it, and 3 more in the corridor). Only 3 dengue fever patients at the moment compared to the peak of 60 last year.

Thursday - spend the morning visiting the physio therapy project and meeting some of the patients there (a total of 5 patients are seen during the morning, stroke, club foot, cerebral palsy) patients would otherwise have to pay and see a private physio.

Thursday afternoon and Friday morning are spent in two different areas supporting with the childhood vaccination programme - I'm giving the polio drops and weighing babies. On Friday morning we did over 50 babies, no idea how many on Thursday.

Friday afternoon I got a ride in a police car and had to meet the chief of police - we were using their car and driver to visit housebound physio patients to check they were ok and that the families were getting on ok doing the exercises wi the patients.

All in all a very busy week