September 2

Ward at Kikori Hospital



Local kids

A fairly quiet day—started mini ward round around 7am, finally managed to go to church. It takes about 45min walk each way on bumpy road. Because this area has a lime stone quarry, the roads have lime stone so when it rains, there are not mud everywhere which makes walking easier. Church was good. It’s in the open space with a roof on top. There are trees all around, i.c. banana trees. There are so many butterflies here and so many different kinds too. My favourite are the turquoise blue ones. They are so beautiful.

Nice to have Dr.Valerie around. She showed me how to cut and scrabed my first coconut to get coconut milk. Then we made sago pancake (main staples here in Kikori)—basically made from a type of palm tree. Kinda has the same texture as tapioca. They cook sago with everything. We had that with tinned mackerel in tomato sauce.

On the medical side for my medical friends—the 4 month old baby with the meningism isn’t improving but not worsening, after 3 days of penicillin, we switched her to TB drugs. So we’ll see if she improves in the next few days. One gentleman has what we think amoebic dysentery. He is still vomiting. He is jaundice as well. Difficulty is that we don’t have a lab to send for bloods so difficult to ascertain what is going on. Learning that TB is so rampant that some of the early signs is just enlarged lymph nodes in kids esp in submental, cervical lymphadenopathy. They are completely well, with no pulmonary symptoms. This afternoon had a child who was having a partial fit with smacking of lips, twitching, starring into space—he is having it with a mild fever. He has had a fit about 1 month ago, then they put him also on TB drugs and he improved. The question is if he has epilepsy or if this is related to an infection. As now he has respiratory signs. We decided to put him on antibiotics first, if no better to start him on antiepileptic drugs. One sad case last night, a new born about 12hours old just died for no apparent reason. I wasn’t there but the baby was completely well, no complications during birth, wasn’t blue, was sucking well and then died like that. Still not sure what happened there. To tell you the truth, I’m glad Dr.Valerie was there as I would have been completely devastated even though I would not have been able to do anything really.

Electricity from the generator comes on about 6:30am until 8am. Then at noon until 1:30pm, and then at 6:30pm until 10pm. Sometimes the electricity goes longer which is nice. It all depends if the person who switches it on or off needs it. I bet he was watching a movie or something last night so it was turned off around 11:30pm. So we kinda adjust to that. I don’t mind if it turns off later. We cook when the electricity comes on. Laundry is basically handwashing our clothes.

P.S.: This is an extract from an e-mail conversation between Chie and myself (Ingo) and I thought it might be interesting to all of you:

Ingo: The picture from the ward looks pretty basic. Did I see this right that there are no matresses and that patience need to sleep on the wooden bed structure?

Chie: The hospital used to have mattresses but they went walking. Basically patients stole them so now the patients have to bring whatever they have. It is very basic. The patient's toilets are disgusting. See, these patients all live in simple huts made from natural materials so they are not used to cleaning..etc...