On visiting hospitals in Tanzania

It's been a while since I posted here.. I doubt people are following my posts so I was taking it easy.. um that's not true, I think I was a bit stuck.

Since I came back from my week-long business trip, I've been thinking what to post. Before I was just spontaneously coming up with stuff or I went to interesting places and it just triggered my thoughts and emotions. But it didn't happen. Why? I think I'm finally getting used to Tanzania; now, not everything seem so exotic like it did before... oh wait, does that tell you anything about my personality or personal life? ok let's stop lol

ANYWAY, it is both good and bad. But for the moment, this process of getting-used-to-the-new-things isn't completed yet, it seems. I was looking at the pictures from the business trip and I felt that I should share these photos with you (whoever may still be reading)!

Business trip No.?: Consultation Visits to 4 District Hospitals in South-Eastern region of Tanzania.

Ok, please don't generalise too much from my pictures, of course there are hospitals in city, but the places I visited look like this...Cool, huh?

But what the hell is Consultation Visit?
Well, we + Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Tanzania are promoting this concept called 5S-KAIZEN-TQM (Total Quality Management) now in 21(? I think) hospitals, and it is planned to be disseminated to 37 hospitals across the country in the next 4 years.

5S-Kaizen is a management philosophy developed by Toyota, for quality improvement and continuous quality management. The S's are;
Seiri (Sort/Sasambua)
Seiton (Set/Seti)
Seiso (Shine/Safisha)
Seiketsu (Standardize/Sanifisha)
Shitsuke (Sustain/Shikilia)
(yes, it's all translated into English and Kiswahili!)

and "Kaizen(改善)" means something like "further improvement" in direct translation.

Why this?
Because this is what you see in these hospitals...






























I must say, these are seen everywhere I went, and I'm not exaggerating. Well, wards (the last one) look relatively okay -then again, maybe not? maybe I got used to it..

5S is such a simple and seemingly normal concept, yet it is not a norm here. It's not a straightforward thing to change someone's mindset, habit or culture. We all know that it could be dangerous, to impose one's habit to the other in some cases. However, on visiting these hospitals, I felt.. well, I hope this project will help, even slightly, to improve the quality of services for the well-being of these people.