A week ago, we had to race against time to save a 12 year old who was rushed to the facility by both parents in the middle of the night when their only son lost consciousness and convulsed 3 times then became still. The mother, more agitated than the father who appeared distraught betraying, observantly, intense fear beneath the surface of unruffled feathers, was shaking. They had taken the poor child to a clinic but were told nothing could be done unless he was transfered to a hospital with a doctor. Luckily for him, doctors were on ground at the Anglican hospital about 5km from where they lived. Upon arrival and exams we noticed the young man was in coma and was very pale at 4g/dl. Preliminary tests revealed a heavy burden of malaria parasite. We were dealing with cerebral malaria here. You see, severe malaria has several ways of presenting and by far one of the deadliest is cerebral malaria. Most times they present just like this case, and other times, they are not preceded by convulsion, one slips into a coma and if care is not taken, the slippery steep leads to death. I was also concerned about his kidneys shutting down as well because of the anemia. Long story short, he was in coma for 5 days until he began to come around. One morning, to the delight of the mother, he open his eyes and said, 'I am hungry', in hausa.
Parents were happy and ofcourse the hospital staff were too. The kateri medical service builds hospitals around rural areas and equip them with health providers, paramount amongst whom are doctors because they know the importance of having one doctor in a community. As my employers, they have succeeded, indirectly, to saving thousands of lives that I have had to treat. It is our hope that they will continue to access sponsors and support so as to exert more effort at strengthening our health systems as they are currently doing. The rural doctor initiative will continue to ensure peasants, rural poor and resource poor settings are attended to without any form of let or hindrance because as humans first, everyone deserves God health.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
August 2021
Categories
All
|