Sylvia's Journal

Our elliptical exercise machine needs to be serviced. It groans and creaks so much that I have stopped using it. This means that I have had to change my early morning routine of a 30 minute walk during which I listen to books on tape. There is really no other time of the day for me to listen to a book. As a result I have no idea what Antony and Cleopatra are up to. She had just manipulated him in given her some choice pieces of real estate around the Mediterranean.

Instead of my walk I am now doing yoga. Yoga and Cleopatra don’t go well together as she interrupts the relaxed breathing. The yoga is giving my very tight muscles a good workout. Living in our restricted ecosystem some muscles are not being exercised at all.

As I usually do on Wednesdays, I try to go to one of the consultative forums where developments, strategies, policies, research related to the ministry’s mandate are being reviewed, praised or criticized. This morning I learned, only partially understanding the local language presentation, about acute severe maternal morbidity and whether these women, who by a stroke of luck, avoided death in childbirth, are more or less likely to use contraception. As it turned out it was not the nearly dying that led to contraceptive use but whether the child born before the current calamity survived. If it did women were more likely to avoid another pregnancy; if it didn’t they were not. Not all that surprising.

A very interesting review of the current situation of the country’s blood transfusion services showed how much work is to be done especially in the private sector. It is at the moment entirely unregulated, with poor or no records of where the blood comes from and who gets it. A frightening number of establishments use either expired test kits or no tests at all to detect transfusion transmitted infections like HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis. We all looked at each other and hoped we would never need a blood transfusion.

It was another long day with a phone call with Boston. The compromise is for our colleagues in the US to start early and for us to stay late. We are looking forward to day light savings time when we are an hour closer to each other making the compromise less taxing for each side.