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What a week!
After orientating ourselves to Francistown on Wednesday, we started our placements in the hospital on Thursday morning (at 7.30am! That was the first culture shock). Anna and I began in A&E, while Fiona and Jemma went to Obs and Gynae. The hospital wasn't quite what we were expecting. We thought it would be a lot better equipped and more Westernized than it really is. The A&E department is exactly what you would expect from an African hospital - full of people, dirty, people lying on trolleys, 2 beds to a cubicle etc. We saw a big range of conditions over the two days there before the weekend - miscarriages, lots of HIV/AIDS, road accidents, children with AIDS and awful infections, TB and quite a lot of trauma. The main cases that have stuck with me are a Zimbabwean man who was beaten up and had a black eye, depressed skull fracture with a brain heamorrhage and bits of bone in his brain, and an abdominal bleed. Another was a woman of 63 who thought she could be pregnant as she'd lost 4 of her 5 children in awful circumstances and a distended abdomen had led her to believe God may have performed a miracle. In the UK, someone saying this would probably be sectioned! But here, it's perfectly acceptable as part of someone's religious or cultural beliefs. The final thing that has had the most impact was a little boy of 6 who has cerebral palsy. He was admitted with severe osteomyelitis (a serious and hard-to-treat infection of the bone), pneumonia and probable meningitis. I was disgusted with the treatment he and his mother received and found myself really having to fight back the tears as I watched him. The poverty here is such that there is no social support or proper medical care for children like him. He was malnourished because gastric feeding is reserved only for people with laryngeal or oesophageal cancers and he was unable to chew or swallow. He was the size of a small 2-year-old. No one cared about the fact he was probably going to die. At home, this would be totally unacceptable and a child admitted in this condition would immediately have a lumbar puncture and IV penicillin. A whole team of staff would be buzzing around in a frenzy. Here, the child lay for about 3 hours before a doctor went near him and when he eventually did, he took no action for at least another hour! The medical care, communication skills and compassion we've witnessed to date are completely unacceptable and we're really feeling the culture shock.
To cheer ourselves up last weekend, we went to another hotel owned my the same person as ours and sat by the pool all day! Really lovely. This weekend we're heading to the salt pans at Nata. We drive out on quadbikes on Saturday and camp out under the stars before driving back the next day - we're all really looking forward to it! It's all fully guided and well organised so anxious parents have no need to worry!
Getting dark so we have to go but will update again soon!
Lots of love,
JAFA xox
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Ian Collen
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Hey Amy, it sure sounds like you are seeing a lot. Keep up the good work. We just had Day one and team dinner in America Diner in Union Station. Quite nice to have the team here, makes it all more worthwhile!