Welcome to Juba

Well, I'm actually here. I'd all but given up hope of actually coming out to Juba, having spent at least a year talking about it. For those of you that don't know, I came out here as a medical student in 2008, and have always wanted to come back and be a little bit more useful than I was then. In the last 5 years, a lot has changed - the most striking thing is that in July 2011, Southern Sudan became the world's newest country: South Sudan. Juba has changed hugely since 2005, when the second civil war ended, with a lot of foreign aid being pumped in to try and build up infrastructure. Since I was last here, buildings have sprung up everywhere, and many of the rutted, red-mud roads have been paved. There is a lot to say about Juba and South Sudan, and I'm sure I'll write about it in future.

I will be working at the Juba Medical Complex, a large private clinic in Juba. It is just across the road from Juba Teaching Hospital where I went last time I was here. I had originally planned to go back to JTH, but it became evident that I couldn't arrange anything with them - apparently it is quite chaotic there currently. I will go and visit and see for myself, and hopefully be able to do a little work there too. JMC is a rapidly growing unit, it currently has pretty good lab services, plain Xray, Ultrasound, Endoscopy, and there are currently building another building which now contains a CT scanner (it isn't operational yet) and will hopefully have an MRI scanner and high-care ward. The plan is, after a week or so of cramming tropical medicine into my head and shadowing some of the doctors, to join the rota as a medical officer - which is an SHO equivalent, as far as I can work out.

At the moment there isn't too much more to say, as I've only been here for 2 days. I'm sure there will be plenty to tell you in due course though.

Things are getting real

So, after what seems like an age, I finally have a date to go to South Sudan. For those of you who have spoken to me over the last year or so, you will know about the vague plan that I have often mumbled about, but never seemed any closer to happening. After a lot of trouble communicating with the appropriate people on South Sudan, and a bit of visa faff, I've managed to be sure enough that I'm actually going to book flights. I will be flying out on Thursday morning, and about 23 hours later I will hopefully be in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

The plan is to work as one of the medical doctors at the Juba Medical Complex, which is a fairly new, but quite basic hospital in Juba. I'll be one of the team, working normal shifts but hopefully doing some teaching and audit type stuff too. I will be there for 3 months, and will hopefully learn huge amounts about medicine and myself. My aim is to share my experiences on here to give you a flavour of what is going on out there.

I'm pretty excited about the whole thing, but it also feels pretty surreal, as I've been talking about this for so long, but without having a solid plan, so I haven't actually had to face up to the reality of it yet. Given that I've had so long to prepare, I also feel like I'm not at all ready, but I'm sure i'll be sorted in time. One of my main concerns is that I haven't done any proper ward medicine for 4months, so I'll probably be a bit rusty, especially as I'm going to see more malaria every day than I've seen in total since qualifying. It will probably be a pretty steep learning curve

Sorry I haven't written much lately, but I've just felt in limbo as I've been pretty close to having this organised but without any kind of confirmation and the nagging feeling that it might just not happen. Since my last post, I've been skiing for the first time, having an amazing time doing something exhilarating in somewhere beautiful with some pretty great people. I also have a job lined up for when I get back from Juba, with a 2-year core medical training job in Bournemouth.

Anyway, I think that will probably do, I will try and be more frequent now that I have things to write about.