Workers

The intern grabbed a sheet which were in short supply as the stretchers and floor space were overflowing with silently bleeding people who were in a bus that overturned on a stormy night. He gently nudged the man laying there bleeding from the nose. There was no response as he whispered "rafiki" and nudged him again. So he placed the sheet over the man and smiled when the patient clumsily tried to move the sheet off his legs.

Words come suddenly and loudly from the medical officer. "Unaumwa nini?" asked briskly as the gray haired, beleaguered woman takes a seat on the stool. More words uttered singularly, with a playful sense of authority. Eventually a smile on her tired face appears slowly like a sunrise.

Handwritten crumpled paper is unfurled as the intern moves to the front of the room and takes a seat at the table. The room is full of white jackets. The white jackets belong to the medical students with notebooks open, prepared to record the presentation. Wound toilet, debridement and wound excision are defined concisely and explained clearly. The orthopedic surgeon, after a brief period of silence, says " Good job".

Worn down. The looks on the faces of the nurses who have worked the night shift. Always, I mean always, an engaging "Habari za nyumbani?" as I walk in each morning.

Sometimes what needs to happen, happens. Sometimes not.
The moments are lived fully. That allows for interruptions that rarely seem unwelcomed. I am unsure how the future is lived in here. I don't think it is counted on. The past seems quickly forgotten as well which can be good and bad.

The conversations here can seem like flying in a small plane through a thick, white cloud. You can't see where you are going or from whence you've come. It is pleasant for the moment actually but there is a foreboding sense of a need to see if you are about to hit the side of a mountain.

Nameless

A friend of mine wrote a blog about his experiences in a developing country health care setting and chose to change the names of the people and places. I think this was a good idea.

It was my original intent to attempt to share these experiences as objectively as possible so the stories would be about this place and its people and not me. I can't seem get out of the way. I also want people to know about BMC and the work that The Touch Foundation is doing in Tanzania. I can only hope that those who see through my eyes will forgive any inaccuracies or misconceptions that may result.

The life expectancy at birth in Tanzania is 46. A perfect storm of HIV, tuberculosis, child and maternal mortality and increasing unintentional injuries from road traffic accidents combine to account for this shortened life expectancy.

There are also cases like the 23 year old who presented to casualty complaining of chest tightness. His blood pressure was 205/120 and he could not lie down on the stretcher. He had crackly noise in all his lung fields but looked comfortable as he calmly shared his symptoms with me. He also had markedly pale eyelid linings. He said his stool color had been black for 2 days. Again the ICU was full and to clear the casualty stretcher, the young man was admitted to a ward. In the meantime, I followed him to x ray after I was told a portable film was not possible. I saw the fluffy white markings in his lungs that indicated fluid was spilling into his air spaces. I walked his tubes of blood to the lab and waited for the result which was a hemoglobin of 4.4(less than 33% of what it should be).Unlucky for him, his blood type was O negative and the hospital once again had no units of the rare(for Mwanza)blood type. I rode with him up the elevator and explained to the resident and charge nurse that he should not be here and to please take him to ICU when a bed cleared. Later that day I saw him sitting on an ICU stretcher eating rice and meat. We smiled at each other and waved a greeting. I relaxed and went home. This morning I went to ICU and discovered that this young man had died at midnight.

You know if it was ethically acceptable I would choose for you to know the names of each of these patients described in my postings. I think it adds to the sadness that they are the only nameless participants in the stories I share.

The Right Thing

A surgery professor was renowned for his simple instruction to surgery residents, "Don't see what you can get away with, do the right thing."

A baby grunts when she is having trouble breathing. It is the same sound Venus and Serena make after a ground stroke, just a whole lot quieter and after every breath. It is a distinctive sound.

That sound was coming from a mother's mbeleko(the patterned scarf that holds the baby to the mother's body) A toddler was slumped to the side on her mother's back. The breathing was rapid and labored.

The nurse shared with me that the 22 month old had swallowed kerosene. This is a not infrequent problem because in the home dangerous liquids are stored within reach in soda bottles or similar containers.

The problem is that vapor and/or liquid reach the child's airways with inflammation and fluid leakage into the lungs as the result.

This baby girl was struggling with every breath. We placed her on oxygen. There are no monitors. The ICUs had no beds. There is no portable x ray.

I talked with the pediatric resident on call to explain the situation and she said to admit the baby to the ward. We had to take the baby off oxygen to get an x ray. There are no portable oxygen cannisters.

Today I went to the ward where the baby was admitted. She was doing fine. We got away with it. There was no right thing to do.

Context

In the telling and hearing of stories, the context is important. What constitutes a context? Why is it important? In my case the context is all new and includes geography, culture, politics and history. My anthropology friends(Can you believe I have more than one?) caution me that my understanding of illness and treatment are different from my patient's understanding and in this culture the differences are more pronounced. I am limited by language and perspective in understanding them.
Politics and history I can read about and my son Luke gave me a depressing but informative book entitled "The State of Africa" which reviews the last 50 years of post-colonial African history. We all make judgments on the basis of our experiences and context is important as it informs your judgment. I have shared with you a number of experiences but I wanted you to know that my context is limited for now.

The Touch Foundation for whom I work has as its objective to address the shortage of health care workers in Tanzania and I refer you to their website for more information. www.touchfoundation.org. Let me share with you one "statistic" that has informed my judgment. I attend 0730 morning surgical rounds and the surgery interns report on their previous day. There are 4 interns. One is on call for the wards and one for the casualty department. On average the intern on the wards reports that there are 300 patients on the surgery service in the hospital. The interns scrub in on theatre cases and attend outpatient clinics. Those of you with a medical background know the relative impossibility facing these young Tanzanian physicians as they perform their daily duties. The overwhelming responsibility of this patient load is but a microcosm of what the country as a whole faces.

Speaking of new experiences I will end with a list of firsts:

To feed a monkey my breakfast buscuit as he jumped beside the hospital walkway on my way to surgery morning report.
To observe a 13 year old girl barely flinch as she sat on a stool having her blood drawn. Her regal bearing was all the more amazing because her hemoglobin returned 2.8(should be 4 times higher)
To watch a mother carry her limp 5 year old son who 2 days earlier had been bitten by a snake on the right foot. His leg was swollen twice its size up to the thigh.
To walk home for a superbly prepared vegetarian lunch every day. Alfan is the cook of my food(that's the way it is expressed in swahili which I prefer to "my cook")
To be left on the side of the city street as my taxi driver negotiated a "fine" with police for pulling out in front of another vehicle.
To sleep inside a mosquito netting every night. Something is a bit more unsettling here about being awakened by the high pitched buzz of a mosquito around your ear.
To watch the sunset over Lake Victoria in the evening.
To discuss with a nurse in Australia about the transfer of a patient to Johannesburg or Nairobi or Sydney