8. Timon's Report - Poverty, Pain and Prices

 As a matter of curiosity, apart from the special cases discussed we also noted a decrease in the frequency of patients in both health centre and dental clinic and we thought it was associated with the election situation in Kenya, as there was fear of post election violence like last time. 

The impact was the shooting up of fuel price in the region beginning from Uganda where some petro stations stopped selling to keep their stock for the time of crisis just in case things went wrong in Kenya. In Butembo there is no hydro electricity so, all the businesses are run on generators; therefore the prices of all commodities had equally increased having as consequence the changes in people’s prioritisation. 

The reason to explain this is the impact of the dependency of the businesses and life expenditure in the eastern part of Congo a land locked kind of area that totally depend on the East African countries (Kenya and Uganda are like umbilical cord to supply eastern Congo). 

This made us to think of a situation where any crisis in a neighbouring country lasts longer it can have a negative impact on people’s lives and businesses there. 

With the low awareness of oral health values in our population, in such situation only those suffering with severe pain would turn up for dental services, and with the extreme poverty affecting the majority of the people they will give up because survival for food will be the highest priority than oral health services. The condition in which the Butembo clinic is functioning with very limited income and supply is totally insecure and hopeless. 

In regard to this, one of the points in the staff meeting was to encourage them to work hard, be creative to keep busy, set the appointment system and keep time, respect the patients, be kind, supportive, and compassionate to make them like the services and keep on coming. This will keep the clinic busy and functional to the point of increasing the income so that at the end of the month they may be able to save some cash be able to purchase more supply and have something in stock to cater for the time of crisis.