Small but Mighty

If you haven’t heard about the Davis Family Clinic, let me introduce you… Located in a remote area in the Mara, this clinic serves many patients across the region. Keeping Angama’s guests, team and the entire community healthy is our priority. We are able to deliver our services with the support of the Angama Foundation and the guests who fund it through their nightly contributions.

Registered as a Private Level 3A Medical Centre as per the Ministry of Health, the clinic is looked after by both me and Dr Irene Osamba — with the help of Dr Emmanuel Wafula. While we are on duty, we must be available 24/7 as medical emergencies can happen at any time of the day or night. Thanks to the Angama Foundation, patients from neighbouring communities receive free consultation services with subsidised costs for the entire treatment. This is an essential part of our practice, as often our patients wouldn’t be able to afford the treatment if it hadn’t been subsidised.  

Usually, my day starts with a big cup of sweet Kenyan chai (or tea) and sweet potato or cassava — this is the classic Kenyan breakfast. Then it’s off to the clinic to dust and clean before opening the doors to our first patient — good hygiene makes for a good practice.  

Next, we have consultations. People come from far and wide to be treated at the Davis Family Clinic, as it is the best and most well-stocked clinic for a great distance and patients know they will be treated with the utmost care here. With the consultations come physical examinations, laboratory work, injection safety and finally the dispensing of prescriptions. 

All three of us have many years of experience in providing clinical care to patients across the region. Handling critical cases from the community such as snake bites, animal bites, and surgical cases as well as community outreach programmes is just a normal day for us. One of the most important community outreach programmes is the school deworming project, which is carried out every six months with Zentel 400mg tabs. This treatment is given to the children at four primary schools neighbouring Angama Mara and keeps the pupils free from intestinal worm infestation.  

An exciting development in the last eight months is that we have been able to introduce a cervical cancer screening programme, VIA, to women of childbearing age. With this screening programme, we’re able to detect pre-cancerous lesions early and initiate referrals and treatments.  

We recently received a donation of a cryotherapy machine that has substantially helped us in the treatment of positive precancerous cervical lesions and sexually transmitted infections. This donation comes from the beloved guests who visit and stay with us at Angama. The cryotherapy machine is just the start of what we’ve received as donations over the past years. Our “little clinic” might be small, but it’s mighty with a centrifuge machine, oxygen concentrator, autoclave machine and Magnus microscope to help us in our work.  

Approximately 500 patients walk through our door each month, hoping for answers, cures and relief. We help each one with the medication and equipment that we have at our disposal, as well as appropriate referrals to specialised care through Amref flying doctors and free ambulance services from the Ministry of Health.