Mother & baby clinic


Tuesday 15th June

The Brothers and Fathers are all happy as Italy drew and did better than Australia (they are mostly Italian)!

The little girl with malaria is still alive, temp down but mentally not with us yet.

The lorry bringing all the supplies has still not arrived. On it are all the antibiotics, IV panadol, and quinine - stocks now very low.

Another hard day with children, I can’t get over it - so many, so sick, much worse than last year, mosquitoes everywhere.

We are now full, and are overflowing into the surgical ward, perhaps it’s a good job the theatre list was cancelled, at least they have a few empty beds.

One of the children needed oxygen today which we don’t have, only an oxygen separator machine which pulls in room air and removes the carbon dioxide, so giving oxygen. The problem is that it depends on the quality of the air in the room.

We had the child on the couch in the treatment room - very small and two adults plus all the others who want to come in to see what is going on. Not a lot of oxygen to extract.... My fear also is that tonight I don’t think the machine will be able to be used as there will be no lights in the hospital at all. Each ward has a small light on but combined they will drain the battery. No one has torches - impossible to see anything.

Just trying to find equipment is very hard. I found some nasal prongs (for oxygen) but they had perished as they have been cleaned too many times; I found an adult mask which I had to use on the child until P came to the rescue with a child’s mask. That may be something I might have to ask Ian to bring over for me in his already over-weight bag.

This child had a Hb of only 3, so we quickly checked the mothers blood, same group, free of HIV and Hep B, so I went ahead and removed about 300 mls from Mum who kept saying ‘calas', ‘calas' (enough, enough). They get very worried when they see all this blood coming out of them.

After a cup of tea and a week’s supply of iron tabs given she will be OK.

The child continues to fight for his life - time now 6pm.

The silly thing is, today I had to teach Oxygen therapy in the class room to the blue nurses (nurses who run the hospital). I always hear myself saying "Well, unfortunately at this hospital I can’t show you one, but if you ever go to another big hospital you may see this in use".

My feet are quite swollen just now from all the mozzie bites - they seem to like RID!! Just hope that my Doxycyclin will keep on working. One of the students was admitted today with malaria - very sick.

Every one was too busy today to think about cleaning.