July camps 2008

This young child was limp and critically ill. The parents were procuring various tonics from the local healer when Rose, our Health Care Worker stopped the parents warning them these measures were of little use and that the child required urgent medical help.

With simple measures and appropriate care this child's life was saved from the greatest threat, ignorance.

July was filled with activity in all the communities visited, Esama, Ekogbene, and of course Enekorogha, where outwith the Clinic over 160 patients were treated.

Malaria is on the increase especially among the children though mortality is low as compared to prior times when we were not established in the community
The awareness among the villagers about a new way to combat malaria,febrile convulsions,anaemia,diarrhoea and vomiting and even tetanus has taken a new turn as they are continually exposed to health talks both at the clinic and continued home visiting.

Many patients are too ill to get to the clinic, and many have accepted their illness with passivity.

This young man was found through home visitation.

The difficulty is where there is no money to get to hospital and insufficent diagnostic laboratory services to establish a correct diagnosis and treatment plan. HIV/Aids is present in the communities and with no easy access to retrovirals, or cancer drugs, palliative care is a vital area we are to develop. This area of health care remains the greatest challenge in rural Primary Care provision.

The current spilling of crude oil into the rivers will not make matters any better as most of the villagers are involved in the local refining of crude oil which is a potential source of danger to their health in the near future. It is understandable that this cottage industry is growing given the lack of economic opportunities in the region, but the death from explosion, and poisoning is considerable.

Communities visited were esama,ekogbene and our base clinic enekorogha
Over 160 patients were seen this month and about 55% were children over 40% were women which included pregnant women , the rest were men.

During our home visits,we took a random survey of mothers who claimed with evidence in their cards that their children had recieved a number of vaccines especially the BCG vaccine but this was not evidenced in their children as quite a number of them had no post BCG scars. This of course is a result of poor or no storage facilities for the vaccines, resulting, in the main  their inactivity.Of course some do not respond to the vaccine but below a Health Care Worker points out a scar proving seroconversion to the BCG vaccine.

 

The latter half of the month saw triage camps underway for the upcoming Surgical camp to be held in August.