Not Just Educational, but Inspirational

Wow! What a day! I really wish I could begin to describe the numerous emotions and all of the information that was experienced and taken in today.

My morning started with getting up shortly after seven and going through the routine of getting ready. Not only did my alarm wake me up, but so did the chicken crows. They are so loud in the morning. We had the bus loaded by 8, and it was off to MUBS for breakfast. I had my usual toast. Definitely not very exciting.

At 9:30am, all of the students on the trip that are pharmacy majors, there are 5 total, left MUBS to  go visit the Pharmacy Society of Uganda, or PSU. PSU is a professional pharmacy organization that is in charge of regulating the curriculum and profession of pharmacy.

It was an extremely enlightening and interesting hour that we got to spend with the secretary of the organization. We learned about some of the requirements for pharmacy students in Uganda, how they become licensed in Uganda, and we went over some of the regulations. It turns out that there is a National Drug Administration here, which is comparable to the FDA in the United States. The differences you may ask? We are actually forced to abide by the rules and legislation that the FDA comes up with, the NDA, not so much. We were told today that many of the rules and regulations are broken all of the time because of the limited amount of resources.

We also learned that there are a total of about 300 pharmacists in Uganda, so each one is allowed to own or work at two shops, or what we would consider retail or community pharmacy. They must spend 20 hours a week in each shop, and during the rest of the time pharmacy technicians, nurses or nursing students run their shop. However, many pharmacists abuse this system by saying they are at the other shop when called, and in actuality they are at neither shop. Because there are so few pharmacists in the country, the secretary told us that many pharmacists have a poor work ethic. They are hoping to see it improve in the next few years since they are now up to having about 100 pharmacy graduates a year.

Pharmacists here have pretty much the same areas that they can go into after they graduate. The main difference is if a pharmacists goes into a hospital setting they are mostly in charge of ordering the prescriptions and making sure that they are what it is actually suppose to be since drugs are tampered with a lot, to make the strength lower or even more like taking a placebo instead of the correct dosage. We were told that some private hospitals are working on having more of a clinical pharmacist, but it is a slow growing area.

There was so much more that we learned and experienced in that short amount of time, but I don’t want to bore you all with my nerdiness. Yes, I took 3 pages of notes during our short visit. Yes, I loved every single minute of it. Yes, I made sure I soaked it all in.

Next it was off to actually see a community pharmacy that is in a urban setting. Trust me, it’s a lot different from the rural one I visited earlier in the week ;) It was really neat to get to see. This pharmacy actually had some prescription medications at it, and they enforced the need to have a prescription to get them. They also had a lot of over the counter medications as well. However, everything was stocked so that you needed the help of one of the workers to get anything.

Lunch today was at MUBS and consisted of rice and noodles. It was good and was plenty for me since my stomach decided to start churning a little bit before lunch.

After lunch it was off to visit The AIDS Support Organization, also known as TASO. This was the most incredible experience. We not only got to hear about how the organization got started and how HIV is being treated in the country now, but we got to hear their drama group perform. This group is made up of TASO volunteers, most of who are HIV positive. The group goes around performing at different functions and areas, including schools, education the public about HIV/AIDS. They did a great job! I was extremely impressed. In fact, the last song they performed today made me cry.

The organization is doing such a great thing. The drama group members introduced themselves towards the end of their presentation, and I was shocked to learn that some of them had been living with HIV since 1990! 21 years, and they seemed to be doing really well. They are definitely beating some of the negative stigmas that still can be heard at times in Uganda. They were extremely inspirational, and their music was very well put together and touching. Not to mention that is very informative. Their biggest mission at TASO is to make sure that someone who gets HIV doesn’t give up hope, and they are doing a fantastic job of it!

With renewed spirits and full of hope for HIV victims of the future, we left TASO behind to go exchange money again for those who needed to. Then it was off to a shop to buy soccer jerseys for the upcoming soccer game. Since I’m not a soccer fan, and I don’t follow the sport, I passed.

We ate supper tonight at Faze 2, which was a mixed restaurant with lots of different food choices. I had chicken in a basket because I’m missing food from home now. I’m starting to get tired of the same foods over and over. It was really good. After a couple of hours there it was back to Red Chili for the night where I will work on my journals and packing for the next couple of days.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Murchison Falls National Park. We will be traveling pretty much all day to get there. Apparently we sleep in something similar to tents while we are there. The next day we will be going on a game drive in the morning, and the afternoon will consist of a boat tour of the area. I’m really looking forward to it, and finally getting a chance to see some of the wildlife that most people expect to see when they think of Africa. Friday will consist of the drive back.

I will have my computer while we are there, but I am not sure how much internet access we will have. I’m in charge of the blog that our class is doing, so I’m hoping the internet is good enough that I am able to get at least that blog post up for the day. I will still make sure I have my blogs written out, and I will post them as soon as I get a chance.

So until then, I leave you with this….