Walking wounded

Happy baby

Boy who was attacked by hyena






Friday 18th June

Well I will give you a bit of a run-down on the hospital and a bit about the type of patients we have in just now. Some of these may be too much information so stop reading now!!

Two gunshot wounds both lucky - bullets went straight through, one arm, one thigh.

One little girl who was bitten on the toe by a snake, not sure what type, was very sick. We have no antivenene as yet - trying to get it to keep at the hospital with no refrigeration is hard. She has had a very high temp and a swollen leg, but slowly improving.

This might distress some people. A boy of about 6 years old was riding his bike along a track one morning about 8am, when a hyena jumped out and attacked him. He tried to fight it off with his hands but it was biting into his head; hyenas have enormous jaws and a terrible grip. Lucky for him a cattle man was coming on the track and frightened it off. He brought him to the hospital with a very bad head wound and his hands were badly bitten. He has dressings done every day and is improving slowly but what a shock! It was on the track that we use to go to Rumbek...

About 8 HIV patients, one father and child both positive, the mother has already died. As we are the local centre for giving Antiretroviral therapy (ART), we will be seeing more and more. There is also a mother and child, again both positive, the child suffering from malnutrition too. When you look down the ward, it looks as if they have all been in a concentration camp, all so thin and wasted, they just seem to stare into space, so bad.

One case of typhoid, two children with cerebral malaria, the one I spoke about before remains the worse, not sure if she will make it. The mother has joined the father now, as she had to return to her village to bury her other child.

We had a young girl of about 16 yrs come in today with a bad wound to the leg, very deep and a strange dry green colour. Apparently she had been a patient some months ago and the wound was healing, then she was discharged to come in for twice weekly dressings, but she was lost to follow up.

Her father had taken her to the local magician or witch doctor who had treated it with ground-up cow dung or goat dung rather then bring her to the hospital. This often happens. They sometimes, I am told, put a piece of cow bone into a wound, or ground up root of something, bleeding is also practised with these very anaemic patients....

It all seems so strange to us Westerners arriving in this country, but these things have been practised for hundreds of years, and sometimes they may get good results - I have not seen any, but there again I've only been here a short time.

Who's to say we are right giving them all our antibiotics, so that by the time they join the third or second world countries they already will have no immunity to most of our super bugs? Perhaps it is we who are wrong. Sorry, a bit down today; it is never-ending the misery for these poor people.

On a lighter note, I am now the proud owner of a chicken. Done the goat! A present from David. David, who was in charge last year on the children’s ward, brilliant with the kids, could get a cannula into the smallest dehydrated babies, is now in training in the school of nursing. He said he was so pleased to see me back, so sweet. I just hope he goes well, he has got all the practical skills but he only had a few years at school, so is struggling when it comes to classroom work.

The Sisters are giving him extra lessons to help him through.

At the moment, the chicken is wandering around the Sisters' hen-run; until we cook it, there is nowhere else to keep it here. After discussing with the rest of the volunteers in the compound, it has been decided to have it tomorrow night. So, I then had to explain to Martha the cook what was happening. I have no Dinka, she no English, so after lots of chuck, chuck, chucks and neck pulling and pointing towards the Sisters' compound I just hope she understands. Or we may find something completely different in the pot!!