How in the world do you set up a mobile medical clinic, you might ask. That’s a great question.

We had 8 days of clinics in 6 different villages, there were two villages that we came twice to.

There was one doctor, one nurse acting as a doctor, one pharmacist, three medical students scripting or working in the pharmacy. There was one other American nurse working at triage, one Romanian nurse doing triage and helping translate, 2 translators, one CNA acting as an optometrist, and there were about 8 people that were not medically inclined that were either a) acting as a medical person or b) helping in the logistics and admin of the clinic. There were also other translators that changed each day and people who acted as crowd control, trust me that was an important job!

It takes a lot of people to help run a successful clinic!

The clinic requires bags and bags and bags of drugs. Lots of drugs, we have a miniature pharmacy station at every clinic. We had lots of supplies that were needed or were there for “just in case” since you just never know what you might see in the villages.

At the start of the clinic, someone goes around the village to announce that the medical team is coming and that they should bring their whole family to such and such place. We pull up in our two vans and a trailer and quickly set up.

Every location is different, sometimes it was just one giant hall and people rotated around the room to the different stations. Sometimes there were different rooms that they had to float between, it just depends on the place.

The different stations start with a waiting area. Every member of a family gets a number. Next is triage. This is where they take blood pressure, pulse, name, age, and write down the major complaints. Then they wait some more for the doctor stations. They take the little slip of paper they got at triage to the doctor, he reads it, asks some more questions, maybe the doctor asks to have an EKG done on their mobile EKG machine. (There’s a separate station for that.) The doctors generally always look into their ears, listen to their hearts and breathing, check throats, maybe freeze a wart and then prescribe some medicine.

The major complaints were headaches and back pain. Many of the people we saw were very, very poor. Many of them were gypsies whom are never treated well in the hospitals. There were more than one instance of someone having had a heart attack a week ago and was sent home from the hospital with only a few pills. Nothing else. Most gypsies are afraid of the hospitals because of how they are treated there and therefore have many health problems.

There is also the optometry station. Triage may prescribe them to go and get some glasses. Lots of people needed reading glasses. We had a bunch of glasses donated and so simply needed to find the right fit for each person. I was amazed at how many people desperately needed glasses but did not have them. Quite a few people cried when they could read for the first time.

After seeing the doctor, the next station is the pharmacy. Everybody gets vitamins, many people receive Tylenol or something similar, there are many people who received high blood pressure medicine, lots of people had worms and so got medicine for that. We had many instances of scabies and ears that needed to be cleaned out. We actually cleaned out a piece of wood from someones ear and saw a dead fly in someone’s ear. (They didn’t believe us when we said that and didn’t want their ears cleaned.) There were several ulcers that needed to be dressed and other various wounds that needed cleaning. Sometimes we gave out canes to the those that needed it.

We did a few house calls to some that could not come. Once to a man who was dying of cancer and once to a lady with diabetes and was not able to walk very well.

The last official station was a prayer station. There was almost always someone who stopped people on their way out the door to pray for them. There were several people who gave their life to Christ and wanted to know more about God. This is a very important station.