June 2010
1 post
Staff at the Clinic Make a Difference
When the rains hit in South Sudan this time of year, a lot of things get slowed down and halted. Because of the poor condition of the roads when it rains, the chance of getting a vehicle stuck and even lost is very high, since the roads are all dirt.
But for the staff of the Duk Lost Boys Clinic, those risks are worth taking.
It happened one night when a mother in labor came to the Clinic. She...
May 2010
1 post
A 15-Month-Old Girl's Story
It was a long month, but a positive one for a 15-month-old girl in South Sudan.
Her mother had brought her 55 miles from her home village to the Duk Lost Boys Clinic for treatment. She was malnourished, suffered from chronic diarrhea, and had an infection. She was received by Juma Malual, who was born in Duk and is one of the Clinical Officers (akin to a Physician’s Assistant in the U.S.)...
April 2010
2 posts
Records Break in March
March was a busy month for the Duk Lost Boys Clinic, setting all kinds of records in its three-year history. These records include the highest number of patients in a month (2,457), which meant conducting a record number of laboratory tests (1,049), a record number of pre-natal check-ups (155), and the midwives tied the record for deliveries in a month with 10, set the month before.
In...
Ultrasounds Offered at Clinic
Dr. David Reed, one of the John Dau Foundation’s Medical Directors, made a delivery of all sorts last week.
Thanks to a generous gift from SonoSite Corporation’s SoundCaring program, Dr. Reed delivered the first ultrasound machine ever to be used in Duk County. Dr. Reed, who volunteers his time to advise the Clinic and JDF, traveling to the Clinic on his own expense, spent several...
Donating Blood Saved A Life
On a visit last week to deliver ultrasound equipment to the Duk Lost Boys Clinic, John Dau Foundation Associate Medical Director Dr. Reed was called upon for something not requiring his medical knowledge.
The evening of Dr. Reed’s last night in Duk, a young mother and her husband came to the Clinic. She had given birth in her village several weeks ago, and had post-partum hemmorage. In...
March 2010
4 posts
Displacement Occurring in Duk County
When the John Dau Foundation constructed the Duk Lost Boys Clinic in John Dau’s home village of Duk Payuel in March 2007, there were just a handful of people living there. In the three years since then, the population of both the immediate village and the entire county of Duk has grown immensely to more than 70,000 people.
Yet things are still not settled in Duk, evidenced by a recent...
Midwife Comes to the Clinic
The Maternal Child Health (MCH) services at the Clinic have been growing exponentially over the past several months, thanks in large part to the work of the Clinic staff led by its Nurse Midwife, Heryne. Since arriving two months ago, Heryne has been both doer and teacher. She unhesitatingly gets up in the middle of the night for a delivery or an emergency, or runs off to a village to attend to an...
Important Meetings Held in Juba
At the time when the John Dau Foundation constructed the Duk Lost Boys Clinic in May 2007, South Sudan was deserted—there were few non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating, the Ministries and government infrastructure was extremely limited, and the country was just starting to rebuild itself. Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is not what many would consider a capital city in...
February 2010
1 post
Developing An Awareness of HIV/AIDS
It all started with an idea last summer, across 8,000 miles, from South Sudan to the United States. Gabriel Manyok, the Duk Lost Boys Clinic Outreach Coordinator, had an idea to begin a youth drama club throughout Duk County, that would teach about HIV/AIDS to the community using drama, a popular medium in South Sudan. Working closely with the John Dau Foundation staff, they developed the idea.
...
January 2010
4 posts
New Blood Bank at the Duk Lost Boys Clinic
It happens all too often around the world, especially in underdeveloped countries: A patient suffers and too often dies because of a lack of something simple, something available in the wealthier countries but not for the rest of the world, a medicine, an instrument, equipment, or trained personnel. All too often health workers in these places can only look around and lament how they wished they...
The Clinic’s new Nurse Midwife, Heryne, arrived in Duk last week with a large task in front of her. She is one of too few skilled midwives in all of South Sudan, and the only one for more than 100 miles. Maternal death rates are as high as 865 per 100,000 live births, and 1 in 10 children dies before age 1. In addition to her duties at the clinic, such as vaccinating mothers and children,...
John Dau at the Clinic
The following is a post from Jan. 3, 2009
John Dau left Duk yesterday, heading back to the U.S. after spending a month in South Sudan, meeting with other NGOs, government officials, viewing the clinic, spending time with family and friends, and discussing the future.
Every trip around the village brought long greetings with often large groups of people, happy to see their prodigal son returned...
Experiences at Duk
By Tom Dannan
Our team from the John Dau Foundation had been in Duk Payuel at the Clinic for a few days. I was the new guy, who’d been with JDF for six months or so, accompanied by a couple doctors who’d been with the Foundation from the beginning and were on their third trip to the Clinic.
I was hired in the states, and this was my first time to Sudan. In the time before coming,...
December 2009
7 posts
3 tags
Life at the Clinic
In a remote health facility like the Duk Lost Boys Clinic, many of the conditions here are rarely seen in the Western world. As Dr. David Reed, one of the John Dau Foundation’s medical advisors, put it, “diseases that are routine here are ones we only read about in the textbooks during medical school.” Things like diarrhea or fevers can easily turn life-threatening in this...
HIV/AIDS in South Sudan
The whole world knows about the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Over the past decade, awareness has grown to household knowledge in the West about the disease—how it’s transmitted, its effects on the body, and what it has wrecked throughout the world—there still remain people who have never heard of the disease or who know little about it, let alone have access to education,...
A typical night in Sudan
It was around 4am early Sunday morning when there were whispers outside the staff’s living area. “Victor, Vic, Vic” someone said softly outside Victor’s tent—the staff live in tents and an old shipping container—arousing the Clinic’s pharmacist, Victor. The day before, most of the staff had been in and out of the Clinic at various times. Saturdays...
2009 Caring Award Interview Video
John Dau’s 2009 Caring Award winner interview video. Read more here.
World AIDS Day
The Duk Lost Boys Clinic hosted its first-ever event for World AIDS Day on December 1. World AIDS Day happened to occur the same day that a medical team from the John Dau Foundation arrived to inspect the Clinic’s operations and help train staff.
Immediately after getting off the plane, the team headed to the village square, where the community gathered to welcome the visitors and thank...
Cerebral Malaria Video
Clinics Rising brings us a new video from the Duk Lost Boys Clinic documenting a child’s case of Cerebral Malaria:
2 tags
JDF Trains Traditional Birth Attendants
The Duk Lost Boys Clinic trained its first group of Traditional Birth Attendants this past week. Led by the Clinic’s Midwife and one of its nurses, the week-long session brought together women from every part of Duk County, teaching them about safe birthing practices, hygiene, and pre-natal care.
These women have traditionally helped deliver babies in villages but without any formal...