Help arrives on foot and on 4 wheels
When the patients cannot go to the doctor, the doctor has to walk or drive to the patient. This statement describes the concept of the Rolling Clinic, which has proven itself in various German Doctors’ projects. In Luzon, a team of 2 German Doctors, a driver, and a pharmaceutical assistant leaves from the doctors’ house in Conner to visit mountain farmers in remote villages every weekday. Our team goes to 17 settlements according to a fixed schedule. The drive or hike there is often adventurous and requires physical fitness. The spectacular landscape compensates for the exertion. Our patients also undertake strenuous hikes often lasting several hours to reach our outpatient clinic. Some mothers and their children, the youngest of which is still in a sarong on her back, have walked barefoot over rocky paths without food or drink for 4 hours before reaching our clinic.
When our team arrives at the day’s destination, they quickly set up the mobile consulting area while a nurse leads early-morning gymnastics to brisk music with the fitter waiting patients. The Philippinos love that! Further waiting times are used for brief instructions on disease prevention, nutrition, and dental hygiene by a team member. A doctor first selects the emergency cases among the waiting patients so that they can be treated without delay. A nurse registers, weighs, and measures all patients’ blood pressures. All information is kept on patient cards so that the next doctors can have the entire anamneses at a glance. Most adult patients suffer from infectious diseases. Children usually have pneumonia or diarrhea.
To ensure unproblematic communication with the 60 to 90 patients we see every day, every doctor has an interpreter. These interpreters are nurses serving several villages and are employed by the community, which saves us personnel costs.
The Rolling Clinics provide optimal opportunities for on-the-job training for native health workers, whom we train in 33 seminar days. They can accumulate important practice experience under the supervision of our doctors. In the intermediate term, we enable the health workers to provide basic medical care for their fellow human beings. This is a decisive step in the direction of becoming independent of our assistance.