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Tess Panizales, MSN, RN, and her daughter, Christia, were among the first non-Kenyan citizens to volunteer on a three-day medical mission to help Kenyans displaced from their homes during post-election violence that erupted in the African country in December.
Panizales, the quality program manager for BWH’s Center for Surgery and Public Health, had just arrived in Kenya in February with her daughter, a senior at UMass-Boston, to volunteer at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital for three weeks when they heard about the needs of Kenyans in the camps.
“These are people either thrown out of their homes or who lost their homes to fires set by another tribe. They run for their lives because of threat and fear, and many of them suffer from disease and injuries from burns or gender violence, such as sexual and physical assaults,” said Panizales, who began her nursing career with the Red Cross in the Philippines. “There were apprehensions about our trip to Kenya because of the ongoing violence, but it made us all the more determined to go because they needed us.”
After just one day of hospital volunteer work—Panizales as a nurse, and her daughter helping in the Gender Violence Recovery Centre—the two joined clinicians going to the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps. More than 1,000 people gathered in one camp in a makeshift dwelling without shelter. There were already cases of typhoid, malaria and diarrhea.
Panizales got right to work assessing and treating the long line of patients, all of whom spoke mixed English and Swahili. “I didn’t know Swahili/Kishwahili at all, but I taught myself some words based on what the patients were saying and the body area they pointed to,” said Panizales, who kept a list of these words on scrap paper. “As a nurse, you prompt patients to describe their symptoms, and that’s just what I did here, even though it wasn’t in English.”
Panizales’ botched pronunciation of certain Swahili/Kiswahili words had an unexpected effect on her patients. “They laughed at me pretending to know Swahili/Kiswahili,” she said. “In spite of their misery, they were still able to laugh. Through their smiles, we gained the strength to continue helping.”
The medical group Panizales worked with served 504 patients for three days.
When not in the camps, Panizales and her daughter continued to volunteer at Nairobi Women’s Hospital. Panizales rounded with nurses, lectured on quality assurance/improvement and helped in the development of a new training program for community health assistants.
For Panizales, the most difficult part of the mission was seeing patients as young as 18 months who needed treatment for horrific sexual violence. “It was devastating,” she said. “To hear and read about sexual violence among children and women is heart wrenching, but to see a repair operation being done to this child is beyond my emotions. This is when I question myself, what can I do as a nurse, as a mother, as a citizen of the world.”
Panizales is doing what she can to support the nurses and staff she met at the hospital. She already has connected them with nurses at BWH’s Connors Center for Women and Newborns through Julianne Mazzawi to start e-mail correspondence for mentorship. “The nurses in Kenya are excited to have people to ask questions and share ideas with,” Panizales said. “I always believe in education and mentorship. We can learn from them, and they can learn from us for we are all one.”
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