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Published: August 29th 2011
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The baby from the ICU
His breathing tube is out, the tube in his nose is a feeding tube and the other thing is for oxygen Yesterday I (Katie) was able to spend time in the ARV (anti retroviral) clinic. (Lauren had the same experience today) It is the HIV/AIDS clinic in the hospital funded by the CDC. It is very different from the rest of the hospital. It is very clean, there are computers, and it is well organized. Education and counseling are very important parts of the clinic, so before the patients see the doctor, they speak with the counselor. I spent time in the pediatric part of the clinic.
The country has developed a book to help children understand the importance of taking anti-retroviral medications for HIV. The book comes in many different languages and has pictures. They usually introduce the book in a stepwise fashion starting around age 7. The first part of the book enforces the fact that the children can have normal, productive lives if they take their medications. The next part of the book defines CD4 cells (immune cells) as soldiers and HIV as the bad guy. The anti-retroviral medications are described as a blanket that puts the bad guy to sleep. They make the point that the bad guy is not killed by the medications, but put to
Our friend
She greeted us at the hospital every day sleep, so the children understand that there is no cure for HIV. The next part explains that if the patient stops taking the medication that the bad guy wakes up and outnumbers and kills the soldiers and the patient gets very sick. Usually around age 11 or 12, they tell the children the name of the soldiers (CD4 cells) and the bad guy (HIV). Each patient that we saw in the clinic, the doctor would ask questions to make sure that the patients understood why they were in clinic and why it was important to take their medications. Adherence is a big problem, especially among teenagers. This results in increasing resistance and current there are only 2 lines of therapy and anything after that is salvage therapy. They are hoping that starting early with this book will help to increase adherence even in the adolescents.
We also checked in on the baby from the ICU who has now been extubated and is doing really well. He is less stiff and seems to have normal tone. He is not sucking well but this is expected considering how long he was intubated. It is still unclear whether or not he will
have permanent neurologicc deficits but things look promising so far. His mom was feeding him through a tube in his nose and she looked really happy.
Tonight for dinner we went to the NICE restaurant which is the Namibian Institute for Culinary Education. It was really fancy and delicious but affordable since its a training center. Katie had kinglip with saurkraut and I had butterfish with tomato chutney and we had sparkling Pinot Noir from South Africa. They also had these really fun photographs of chefs dressed in there whites hanging out in the sand dunes. The Browns told us about how they had met and their wedding which was really sweet.
http://www.nice.com.na/restaurant.htm
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