Well, we’ve finished our fourth day of neurology clinic at FAME and will be starting the mobile clinic portion of our visit tomorrow. It has been the best clinic so far in regard to the volume of true neurology patients here at FAME and William, our outreach coordinator has done a remarkable job recruiting patients for us. Tomorrow we head to Oldeani and the Rift Valley Children’s Village. The RVCV is an amazing home to around 80 or so children that have been adopted by India Howell as it is her concept that this should be the children’s home and that they should feel safe and not worry about being taken from their family.

We started off today by seeing three boys being brought from Mto wa Mbu who have been unable to walk for some time. The first was a Masai orphan who has been unable to walk for several years and his weakness has not been progressive. We believe he suffered polio or a similar viral illness affecting the spinal cord. Then we saw two brothers with a progressive muscular disorder and most likely a muscular dystrophy, but which one? We immediately contacted our gurus at Penn to see what they thought and got responses very quickly. Here is a photo of the three boys, the two brothers being on the outside.

Young boys from Mtu wa Mbu

We seemed to be pulled in all directions today and Megan and I had to split up again to get everything done. I saw a good epilepsy case at the end of the day as did Megan and we regrouped in the ward to finish up examining our stroke patient who had improved some.

After clinic we took care of our emails to the specialists at home and then drove up to Gibb’s Farm for drinks on their veranda which has one of the most spectacular views of all time with lots of birds and other wildlife surrounding us. Dinner there was amazing as usual and at $25 (local’s price) it is one of the best buys around.

Tomorrow is Oldeani as I mentioned and then Sunday we will be on safari at Lake Manyara.

Mike