It's another baby boy!! Kristin and I along with the Filipino nursing students and Ms. Ruby one of their instructors


January 20th



Today was a day of introductions and meeting the officials of St. Paul University and St. Paul’s Hospital in Iloilo city. We toured around the university and the hospital encountering welcoming and friendly individuals everywhere we turned. We were all given a welcome package that contained an amazing little book called Integrated Management of Childhood Illness. It is a guide created for health care in the Philippines by The World Health Organization, Unicef, The Department of Health for the Republic of the Philippines, and AusAID. It is a manual to help classify and diagnose a few of the pertinent childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, dehydration, diarrhea, malaria, measles, dengue, ear infections, malnutrition, and anemia. Step by step it helps you to classify the severity of the illness and how to go about treating, educating, and referring the client to a physician if need be. Here in the Philippines nurses do have the ability to prescribe some medications so it gives guide lines and restrictions on these as well. It is an amazing book that makes it easy to help guide these clients in the right direction towards recovery. We all agree that even though some of the pertinent childhood illnesses may not be present in Canada it would still be a useful guide especially in the rural areas up North.
The remainder of the day was spent preparing for our few nights in the staff night out in the rural community of Janiauy.

January 21st



Three soldiers down!!! Jenny and Morgan fell ill this morning and Lindsay felt a little off later on. Not to worry moms and dads Susan has been taking amazing care of them and will ensure that they recover as fast as possible.



The majority of today was spent meeting officials such as the Governor of the province of Iloilo, the provincial health officer, the mayor of Janiauy (a municipality of they province of Iloilo), and the officials of the public health office. We were on a role. While at the public health office we saw their cold room where they keep the various vaccines for the entire province of Iloilo. The province of Iloilo has around 3-4 million people and their statistics show that they vaccinate around 85% of the children…….so that’s a lot of money tied up into that little cold room.
The staff house is amazing!!! I feel as though I am staying in a really big tree house. We cook all our meals in between our long hours at the community clinic and try to live as a Janiauy resident would live- limited amenities and technology. Even though stray dogs are constantly barking and fighting it is still much more peaceful than the noises of big city Manila.



Hooray Kristinn, Troy, and I participated in a birth later this afternoon!!!! Kristinn did a fabulous job of delivering a healthy baby boy. However she also had the joy of experiencing amniotic fluid in between her bare toes!! Ha ha ha! That’s right everyone wears open toe sandals in the delivery room even if you don’t have socks on!! Different sanitation rules that’s for sure. At this clinic they do complete many of the same assessments that we do back home, however not as thoroughly or as often.



That evening we chatted away with the students as if we were old friends who had not seen each other in a very long time. The students here are absolutely amazing. We have been treated like royalty for one but we are developing friendships that I am sure will last much longer than his trip.

Preparing for dinner

The staff house

Dinner time!!