Kay Lasante, House of Health

A clinic setting that was new to me was Kay Lasante, which is a program that runs tent camp clinics. While I was there, we went to a camp on Mais Gate (in the general area of Mais Gate 46, which I cannot find via google maps) on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. We'd typically see 60 patients there, with 1-3 docs. One of the clinics was run by just me, since Dr. Joey was tied up elsewhere running a clinic in one of the provinces with Dr. Jacky.


The tent where we saw patients was a little warm and dim, but gave us a roof over our heads and had tables and a sheet for privacy. I often tried to keep the privacy sheet open to allow a breeze in, but it was good to have the curtain for the few times I had to do penile exams for rashes.


I had a table, a couple papers that constituted a paper chart (but with scant records from prior visits, which were wonderful to have!), and a pharmaceutical company branded notepad upon which I wrote all my prescriptions and handed off to the staff to fill. This clinic is staffed with community health workers who can go check up on patients if I ask them to, to ensure they are not declining, or do observed medication therapy if needed. Very handy. One of the tables was an exam table that people could lay down on, but it was not particularly practical, so most exams were done seated or standing.

I saw a lot of children at this clinic, typically with colds, abdominal pain, or rashes. They typically came with an adult - ideally a parent, but oftentimes a child would be brought in by a neighbor or friend if the parent(s) were unavailable. I saw waves of problems. One day was full of wheezy children with likely acute bronchitis vs pneumonia. Another day was full of vaginal discharge complaints. I saw a few patients with chronic issues - one relatively young woman (in her 40s, if I remember correctly) with congestive heart failure, came in complaining of symptoms suggestive of an early acute exacerbation. I had trouble believing she actually had CHF, since she looked decent, but she did have some mild pitting edema in her legs and she knew what medications she was on (lasix and digoxin). I also saw some folks with asthma, diabetes, and hypertension, including a couple folks coming in for a routine follow-up. I did have to teach a couple women to actually come in for their follow-up for hypertension before they ran out of their medications, so I could see how good or bad their blood pressure was, but it was good to see that chronic issues could be addressed with reasonable follow-up.