Pediatric Care in and around St. Francis Hospital, by Anthony's mother!

Wish I could lighten this photo from this end. This little girl has been in the hospital for weeks, being treated for endocarditis. She has two weeks left of her treatment and so far it's looking pretty good for her. Lou buys ceftriaxone for her in a Kisoro "Human Body Shop" since it's not available in the hospital dispensary. And here it costs about $1.25-$1.50 per vial, as opposed to $56 per vial in the U.S.!
By the way, we are still learning this blog thing, and it's Martha putting together this blog and doing the typing. I can't figure out how to get typing above the first photo. But I wanted everyone to know that it's not Anthony talking this time.

Louis and Sr. Emmanuel are examining this patient, who has both a bowel obstruction and glemerulonephritis (inflamation of the kidney), both secondary to worms that have just consumed the child's body. There are horrible worm stories that can be told; many die from them. Sr. Emmanuel is originally from Rwanda, she came here to join the convent many years ago. She is a DEAR, and so good to Lou.
This premie weighed 1.43 kg at birth, and is now up to 1.60. Yea!
We encountered a woman while at Bunyonye Island earlier this week, who is caring for a newborn whose mother and twin died in childbirth. The father is very poor and unable to handle an infant, the paternal grandmother was feeding the baby cow's milk and unboiled lake water, and the child wasn't doing well. This woman, Evas, offered to take the baby and asked for feeding advice from Lou. We helped her get enough formula to last a month or so and he helped her with information on how to adapt cow's milk for better feeding.

Anthony flat out refused to have his photo put in this blog, especially a photo of him holding an orphan. I snuck this one in, just to show you the beautiful island we visited on the day after Easter, after lunch with the Bishop.
Louis teaching the nursing students. He's giving two formal lectures each week now, as well as informal teaching on the ward. He didn't know he'd be doing any teaching, but is happy to do it, and sees it as one of the most valuable ways he can maybe help improve health care here. Any thing the nurses learn, they take with them wherever they go to work, some to hospitals, others to remote out-stations and clinics in villages. You can imagine that he's quite good at teaching.
Last week I (Martha) helped Marie distribute albendizole at the local schools. April is Children's Month in Uganda and all children aged 14 and under receive a free tablet of albendizole, which is a de-worming medication and an essential health action in Uganda. This is the classroom for the oldest grades at the gov't primary school: can you believe how many children were in it? They were such well-behaved children, too. I counted about 130 students in his classroom, and that day we distributed 1195 doses at this particular school. Louie laughed about how many piles of worms were going to be excreted the day or two after this!
John with baby Michael who weighed less than 2 pounds at birth and is now flourishing. He was taken under Marie's wing and bottle fed after his mother died in childbirth. He's now living at Potter's Village, an Anglican-run orphanage which keeps babies and small children until they are strong enough to be cared for by others.
Here's John making the F-75 pediatric feeding formula (75 calories per ml), from a recipe developed by the World Health Organization to use with malnourished infants and small children. We are still missing some of the key ingredients, but the formula still seems to be helping the babies who are using it. Because of a refrigeration problem, John makes it every morning and delivers it in flasks to both the pediatric ward and the surgery ward.
Obviously, this patient isn't a pediatric patient. This photo was taken when I went on a home visit with the head HIV counselor from the public health service (St. Francis Hospital). The counselor listened so patiently to this gentlemen, who had a large infected wound on his back, and tried to convince him to come to the hospital for care.