Jolly Juice

The inpatient internal medicine wards at UTH can get VERY crowded with all of the patients, their caregivers, healthcare professionals and sanitation staff members. During our first few days in the wards I found myself observing my surroundings and trying to take in every little detail. Next to each patient's bed you can find a small cabinet that doubles as a bedside table. On those cabinets you can find many items brought to the ward by caregivers such as pots and bowls for meals, bottles of clean drinking water and often other drinks the patients may prefer like orange Fanta. One special drink that I noticed almost all patients had on their stands in the wards was Jolly Juice. I asked my preceptor about the drink because we don't have this available to us in the U.S.

Bottles of Jolly Juice 

He told me that the Zambian people believe that because the liquid is a dark color similar to blood that the liquid provides health benefits and "is good for the blood". I found this very interesting as anemia is one of the most common conditions we encounter on the wards. The common causes of anemia seen at UTH are chronic illness, malnutrition and pregnancy.  Most patients that we cared for on the internal medicine wards required a blood transfusion and/or iron supplementation and the pharmacy team played a major role in monitoring the hemoglobin level for improvement in their anemia.

While the Jolly Juice may not have any direct benefit on improving the anemia or the blood quality of the critically-ill patients, I bet patients had a little more energy after consuming Jolly Juice due to the sugar content and additional calories in this drink!