Sub-Saharan meets West

For the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to work in the OPD (outpatient department) dressing room which means wounds, wounds, and more wounds.  These aren’t your everyday scrapes and scratches, these are gangrenous, pus filled, and fowl smelling wounds and abscesses (sorry for the vivid description).  I often find myself asking “why did you wait so long before coming to the hospital?”  But coming to the hospital is often a last resort for many of the patients. 

Traditional medicine is often practiced by many and it includes taking herbs or even a visit to a witch doctor.  Illnesses are sometimes believed to be caused by witchcraft.  So once these preliminary measures have not worked, then the patients come to the hospital.

I took care of a young girl in the surgical ward named Sonia who was brought in by her father.  She was bitten by a dog.  As I was washing and dressing the wound I noticed she had a hanker chief wrapped around her left wrist.  I learned she had fractured her arm a few weeks before and was taken to the traditional healer for that injury.  I couldn’t help but think, wow, I flew half way around the world for treatment because my arm was fractured and Sonia was not even taken to the hospital.  This is just one of many situations that have been difficult for me to wrap my head around.

I also want to share with you the story of Elly or as he was known for the first few weeks of his life baby Faith.  The babies are called by the mother’s name until a name is decided upon.  Faith, his mother, is a 21 year old with stage 4 HIV who was in the surgical ward for many weeks due to her c-section incision not healing.  Faith was married but abandoned by her husband so her grandmother was at her bedside taking care of her and Elly. Faith was so sick and therefore was unable to produce enough breast milk.  The nurses and I tried encouraging her to breast feed more often, we helped her with expressing the breast milk but there was just not enough.   The guidelines for PMTCT are 6 months of strictly breastfeeding or formula which is very expensive.  We learned that the grandmother was giving sugar water out of pure desperation because the baby was crying all day. At 6 weeks he had only gained 80 grams.   Every time I walked into Faith’s room, Elly would stare at me with his big brown eyes and each cry was like “I am starving!!!”  I just couldn’t let it continue so I helped arrange for Elly to get formula for the next few months.  That was definitely the western way of remedying the situation and I realize there are many babies like Elly in similar circumstances but I had to help him.  Elly was gaining weight when he and Faith were discharged.  This past week we found out the results of Elly’s first HIV test and it’s negative, he needs 2 more until we know for sure he will remain HIV negative.  Just hoping and praying for his future!