Nurses in Zimbabwe

I discovered my social streak during my community service and decided to pursue a career in nursing. A decision that I have been very happy with to date.

The committed young man feels he is in good hands on the Bachelor's degree programme in Healthcare and Nursing at the Burgenland University of Applied Sciences and recently completed an almost three-month internship in Zimbabwe.

He sees his long-term professional future in humanitarian aid and has already been able to gain initial experience through the Promise Foundation Austria association. "Together with the Promise Foundation Austria, I have already helped to build a school kitchen and a kindergarten building in a primary school in Kariyangwe, in rural north-eastern Zimbabwe." He has now returned to the region for one of the many internships planned for his degree programme.

"For the first six weeks, I worked at Kariyangwe Mission Hospital, a small hospital with 70 beds, around 10 employed nurses, including nursing assistants, cleaners, cooks and ambulance drivers and NO doctor. The activities were varied: apart from the usual patient care (inpatient and outpatient), I immunised children, checked for malnutrition, treated burns, assisted with births, etc." For one week, Daniel accompanied a team of five as part of a national immunisation campaign, which covered the entire catchment area of the hospital and vaccinated around 2,000 children in their villages against measles and rubella.

He spent the second half of his internship in the antenatal care and maternity ward of the much larger Binga District Hospital. It was particularly exciting for Daniel to do good work under the given local conditions.

He was also very impressed by the expertise of the nurses on site. "They are very well trained and have an enormous amount of knowledge. Not least because they also have to cover the work of the doctors."

You can donate to Daniel's organisation here: www.pfau-verein.org