A photo of one

Previously, I did an overview of all the patients in the hospital. Today I will switch gears and talk about just one.
This is a 6 year old girl we will call Sarah. When she came to the hospital, she weighed only 11.7 kg (25 3/4 lbs.)
She is one of the many who have lost their home in the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She and her family had to flee into the forest. She went with her dad and her little sister went with her mom. They were in the forest for 10 days before they made it to a refugee site. Since she was already borderline malnourished, after those 10 days she became even more so.
This picture was taken after about 3 days in the hospital. The areas of skin peeling you are seeing is related to vitamin deficiencies, and the fact that she had a lot swelling is due to her lack of protein.
Her arms are very skinny. (That is a reliable place to look or malnutrition because the upper arm will not swell like the rest of the body.) The area around her biceps was 12 cm, with 14cm being the borderline for normal.
Her apathetic look is from hunger. When you are hungry to the point she is, you don't really care about much.
One of my prayers is that I will be able in a couple of weeks to show you the "after" picture of a child on her way to health.
There are a lot of obstacles though. One, because of the refugee situation we are having trouble getting the specialized formula we need. It is not a question of money but a question of logistics and organization. A lot of that is outside our control because it involves UNICEF and other alphabet organizations. Another is her parents understanding the need to give her food rich in protein and vitamins. The third and biggest is making sure the parents are able to get her enough "regular food" that when they leave she will not drop back into malnutrition again.
The good news is that the family is reunited. Also, for the past two Sundays they have been able to come to church at our hospital, participate in the worship, and hear the gospel being preached.
Please join with us in praying for her.

Updates

The following is an excerpt from the Harvey's newsletter.

We have received 36 war-wounded, 30 very sick refugees, 12 suspected cases of severe H1N1 infection, 12 cases of malnutrition, and 6 high-level government & UN delegations, in addition to all our regular patients, in the past two months. Many of the wounded and malnourished take a long time to heal. We have gone through a year's supply of pain medicine, compresses, and rolled bandages in one month, because of the daily dressing changes. We continue to field questions from the media.
To read the complete newsletter visit Congo Harveys.

CMA Article

The CMA website has a brief article about the hospital with some interesting links.

Republic of Congo: Refugees' Needs Overwhelm Missionary Hospital

Note: Currently, there are 106,000 refugees in our area. There has not been fighting near us since New Year's Eve.

A tour of words

I wanted to give everyone an update of what is going on here. You have seen pictures and heard stories of what is going on here, but today I wanted to take you on a little tour of our hospital with words. I would like to tell the story of every patient, but that would be too long. Instead, I will give you a few examples. This post WILL CONTAIN MEDICAL INFORMATION. If that is not your thing, you can skip to the bottom where it says SUMMARY. The most important thing to realize is that there are a lot of people who need help, and we are trying to provide it.

There are seven buildings that we are using for inpatient care areas right now, and then there are some available for overflow as well.

We will start as the doctor usually does in the Salle de Soin (literally room of care). This is a nursing station, post op care room, intensive care unit, and emergency room rolled into one. Currently there are three patients in this room.

One is a 33 yo refugee who paid to have an abortion, and the nurse doing it ruptured her uterus, pulled out her intestines, and then told her there was nothing more to do. After she arrived here, Dr. Fuka was forced to do a hysterectomy, cut out all of her rectum and create a colostomy. The colostomy is a piece of intestine hooked to the skin and functions to let stool out. This will be permanent for her. The other is a 6 yo boy with severe anemia (hematocrit of 7 w normal being 35-45) and hepatitis C as well. The 3rd is a 15 yo who chose (or was forced) to fight with the rebel forces and now has several wounds. The worst is in his right arm where the bullet injured his nerves in his arm. Now he has electric pain shooting down his arm.

Moving on to the maternity ward, we have 2 preemies in here, a handful of normal deliveries, and one very large full term infant born to a refugee mom. The mom started her labor 2 days before she came to us. On the second day of her labor, she went to a health clinic about a 1/2 day away. They saw she was 8cm dilated, and they decided to rupture her membranes. The baby's hand came out, but he was stuck. He was not head down like he should have been but was lying cross ways. She came to us the following day. We looked for signs of life in the baby with a doppler and ultrasound, but saw none. We did a c-section to get the baby out and to save the mom's life. Just before we did that, we placed the baby's hand back in the uterus. However, once the baby came out, he started to cry! He is now off oxygen and is trying to nurse.

The next room is the woman's medicine ward. Here we have a woman who received HIV and probably her Tb from her now deceased husband. She has been here for 6 weeks. She is all alone with no one to care for her. We are trying to show the love of God to her while she is here.

The next room is the pediatric ward, and I could write a post just about that. I will say that it is full-- 10 kids in 8 beds. (We have two sets of twins here.) There are 3 with the flu, 3 with malaria, 2 with dehydration, and one with malnutrition. All three of the kids with flu were born premature and then caught the flu. One is critically ill.

In the men's medicine ward we have a man who has conjunctivitis and something called iritis in both eyes. He is now functionally blind. He is slowly responding to treatment but really needs an ophthalmologist or optometrist. There is also the man who is newly diagnosed with HIV, and he is struggling to have the courage to tell his wife and get his kids tested.

Moving to the surgical men's ward there are 8 men, 7 of which have conflict related wounds. This ranges from a police officer with cut tendons in both hands, to two men with broken femurs; from gunshot wounds, to an amputation of an arm for the same.

IN the surgical woman's ward there are 5 women. One who had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, three war wounded and one elderly lady who had her gall bladder out. One of the war wounded is an 11 yo girl who needed her right leg amputated at the knee for infection after a gunshot wound. She has displayed remarkable spirit and his slowly getting better.


SUMMARY:
We currently have about 37 patients around 15 of which are here because of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I would ask you to pray for the 3 infants with the flu, Heretier (who is a 15 yo with pain from a gunshot wound nerve injury),the 33 yo woman who lost her uterus secondary to a botched abortion), and a man newly diagnosed with HIV. Pray that he would have the courage to tell his wife and that there would be reconciliation there.

Pray also for our team at this time. Some of our patients are very hard to love, and there is so much loss and sadness sometimes it hurts to much to care. Pray that we would be able to live with the Joy of Christ even as we weep His tears of pain for the pain and suffering that we see around us. Thanks for partnering with us and showing interest in what God is doing through us.