PRT News
Mobile Health Clinic Takes Root in Rural Iraq
(PRT effort spurs healthcare, saves lives in Kirkuk)
By Martin Miller
Special Correspondent
October 23, 2008
Kirkuk – Instead of coping with lingering fevers and other ailments that could eventually kill them, Iraqis in this rural province now have access to timely healthcare thanks to a partnership between the local Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and Iraqi health authorities.
Providing mobile health services has long been a dream that doctors and medical officials in Kirkuk cherished. Now efforts by the Kirkuk PRT and Coalition Forces have turned dream into reality.
The result is a new traveling medical clinic that recently began serving rural villages in Kirkuk whose people had to previously travel long distances to health care facilities located in cities.
According to Dr. Stacy Lamon, Kirkuk PRT Senior Public Health Advisor, “thousands of people live in small villages throughout Kirkuk Province, often far away from a hospital or health clinic. How do they get medical treatment and public health education? They usually don’t. And when they do, it is only because they are driven to a hospital after becoming seriously ill.”
Now, Dr. Lamon, Dr. Sabah, the Kirkuk Director General (DG) of Health, and LTC Hudie of the 10th Mountain Division, found a way to deliver those services to over 700 poor rural people a month who would otherwise be alienated from any healthcare or medical treatment.
The Kirkuk Mobile Health Clinic now makes three trips a week and is staffed by a driver, medical assistant and physician who offer medical services and vaccinations to an average of 50 or more people per trip. Since it began operation in July, the clinic on wheels provided more than 3,000 vaccinations for diphtheria, polio, measles, Hepatitis B and tetanus.
The way it operates is that the health van drives to a village and sets-up-shop in a public building where vaccinations, medical treatment and health education are conducted. Long term medical needs also are addressed. During one recent trip a life-support medical device was delivered to a teenage girl who is chronically bed-ridden from injuries received as a result of armed conflict. The clinic also visits chronically ill patients who cannot travel to receive medical treatments.
In addition to providing active medical care, the Kirkuk Mobile Health Clinic runs health education programs related to cholera prevention, personal hygiene and the importance of vaccinations. It also aids in monitoring and diagnosing diseases by collecting stool and water samples to be tested for cholera and other diseases.
The PRT, the DG of Health, and the 10th Mountain Division also agree on another point. And that is the project could have an even greater impact with the addition of more vehicles. Each new vehicle added could become a fully functioning mobile clinic on its own that would expand the reach of this program.
Both the PRT members and Iraqis now realize that in Kirkuk dreams can come true.
More information click here