Kibosho hospital
We finished our internship in Kibosho hospital three weeks ago. Now after the 10 weeks of internship, we would like to tell you guys a little bit about the hospital.
Kibosho hospital is located high in the Mount Kilimanjaro slopes in a rainforest zone approximately 14 kilometers from Moshi town, 1400 meters above sea level. The road to the hospital from town goes through a few villages and banana plantations. The temperature is lot lower up there than in Moshi town due the higher altitude. There’s also a possibility to see monkeys on the trees around the hospital area but we were unlucky and saw none.
Kibosho hospital is a District Designated Hospital and it is very old and important hospital in Moshi area. The roots of the hospital dates back to 1929 as the hospital started as dispensary. At the beginning it was just one building with 7 rooms and a few mud huts thatched with grass. In the 1950’s and 60’s were built male, female and pediatric wards which are still operative. Maternity clinic, isolation wards and houses for the personnel was constructed at the same time. Later the hospital was expanded by offices for doctors, administrative offices, pharmacy, secretarial offices, Physiotherapy room, and OPD waiting area. Also a separate building was constructed for the laboratory, x- ray department, Medical records and reception. The hospital is supported by the Catholic Diocese of Moshi and staffed by nursing sisters of Our Lady of Kilimanjaro.
Nowadays the hospital consists of male, female, pediatric and maternity ward ( with ante-, post-natal and post-surgical departments), minor and major theater, laboratory, physiotherapy, eye and dental clinic (which are the best known in Kilimanjaro region), OPD and pharmacy. In the hospital there are 225 beds, 120-150 outpatients per day and about 100 deliveries in a month.
The day always starts with a morning prayer with doctors, clinical officer, heads of departments , on duty nurses and students. After the prayer, there are annoucments and then it’s time to give a ward report which is mainly includes professional discussions and experiences, sharing on the day to day management of the patients. From time to time staff members are also asked to bring in suggestions and comments for improving health care delivery in the hospital.
Beside the first class services of dental and eye clinic, hospital offers e.g. Reproductive and child health (RCH) clinic, Voluntary Canceling and Testing (VCT), Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV (PMCT), Care and Treatment clinic (CTC) and Home Base Care (HBC).
During our internship we worked at every ward except physiotherapy and pharmacy. We also got a chance to do community visits and held a HIV clinics in the villages.
The main reason we loved to work in Kibosho was the charming and friendly hospital staff. Everybody was treated as equal and there was no such a thing as hurry or stress. Also the fact it wasn’t a big hospital gave us the opportunity to increase our personal experiences to participate and observe in procedures we could never imagine.
Few highlights from our internship:
- Assisting in surgeries (c-sections and hysterectomy)
- Assisting in delivery
- Assisting at dental clinic
- Taking and running samples at laboratory
- Community visits in the nearby villages
Those who are interested in doing their internship in Kibosho: You have to be on third year or further in your studies and you have to do 10 weeks internship to have the requested amount of credits. You also have to bring your own working clothes and shoes and lot of gloves, hand disinfection liquids and surgical masks. The internship fee for the hospital is 25 USD/week but you can ask the school if they are willing to pay the fee. That’s what we did.