Day 3- New arrivals from Afghanistan
Today I have been asked to a visit to one of the outlying areas of Zahedan by the home visitors as there is a couple of pregnant ladies who have been unable to attend our clinic due to fear of crossing the checkpoint. So we headed off with one home visitor and my translator.

When we arrived in the area, we visited the first family where I visited a woman who was 7 months pregnant, so performed an antenatal check on her; a relative came in who had had her baby at home days earlier so I then examined her and her baby who was doing well. We then went to visit the second woman who was 4 months pregnant and had not received any antenatal care, so we also visited her.

One of the older ladies there asked if I could check her blood pressure (which was quite high), so I find out she was diabetic and had high blood pressure but couldn’t get into our clinic to receive medication. Whilst talking with the families we found out that it is getting difficult for them to come into town to our clinics due to fear of being arrested when crossing through the checkpoint. We were then told about a new family who had just arrived in Iran, so we went to visit them to assess their situation.

When we arrived at the house they are staying in we knocked with no answer, eventually a neighbour told us that the woman was home on her own and was too scared to come to the door, in case we were from the police. He explained over her fence who we were and why we had come to see her, so she came to let us in. When we saw her house I was glad we came to see her as there were 10 people living in these 2 rooms, with no window or doors to keep the cold out and very thin cover for the floor( which didn’t do much), they had no money and no cooking utensils, nothing really. I found a well in the front yard, the lady explained that they buy the bore water (not potable) which also had rubbish floating in it, which was there water supply for washing and cooking and drinking. So we explained about preparing the water to make it safer to use and explained that we would be able to return in the next couple of days to distribute some supplies of food (lentils, oil etc) and some non food items such as blankets, hygiene
items, some basic cooking utensils and some jerry cans to keep safe water to drink in. All in all not a bad day we saw 15 patients who were unable to attend medical care.

It is now three weeks after our first visit, this is our second visit to the area, after identifying the need on our first visit three weeks ago. Now we are better prepared also, we have come with me a nurse/midwife, a doctor, home visitor, my translator and our own vehicle and driver. This means we have bought supplies of equipment, drugs and some kits with hygiene items to distribute.

Our last visit we saw many patients going house to house through word of mouth to visit people who complained of having their husbands arrested, or now being just too scared to try and come through the checkpoints.

We started off by visiting some new comers from Afghanistan who had arrived 10 days ago. Whilst we were visiting these families, we had others come to the house to say they had someone who needed to see the doctor or midwife. So pretty soon we had visited three houses and seen a mixture of people from a young 12 year old girl (newly married) who I performed her first antenatal visit on to adults with high blood pressure and range of complaints in between. As word was staring to get around about the medical team visiting, whilst we were visiting some patients in the next house, I turned around to see the room full of people lining up to visit the doctor or the midwife. So I decided to get the gear out of the car and we set up for the rest of the morning in the room of one the families living in this house. I managed to distribute all the hygiene kits to the new mothers I saw that day. These kits contain some items to assist with hygiene, which is important for new mothers and babies who are more vulnerable to succumb from infections in this first few week post delivery of the baby. The kits contained a bowl (to wash baby and clothing), some sanitary napkins, nappies, soap, towel, toothbrush etc).After a while we had a queue of men also, which was surprising ( we don’t often see a lot of men in our clinics or at home when we visit,( as they try and get daily work so  they are working),at the moment it is harder for them to pass through the checkpoints( due to the risk of being arrested), so there were a lot around at home today, it was great that we were able to visit them and provide some access to health care for them.

By the time we headed back home we had visited nearly 40 patients, our home visitors had also assessed the living conditions of these new comers and would arrange a distribution of food and non food items, to help tide them through this initial period, until they can maybe find some sort of income. The patients who needed medication we did not have with us, we arranged one of the home visitors to collect the medication and bring it back out to them.