November medical Camps, Ogbeinama, okoloba, ekogbene, Ogriabene.

23rd November - 1st December 2006. This was the second joint annual camp with Dr's from the UK and Nigeria operating over four communities, seeing between 900-1000 patients over the space of a week.

 

infected chronic ulcer

cleaned and dressed

daily dressing and improving after 48hrs

This young boy has moved in with one of our Health Care Workers to receive daily dressings over the next 2-3 months until all the dead tissue has ben removed and the ulcer is fully healed.

This second child presented with a circumferential ulcer that had arisen after stepping on a thorn. Dressed by the local native doctor some weeks months previously the dressing had not been changed and the small abcess now threatens the entire viability of the leg. Again this requires long term followup, but the father of the child failed to reattend after the second day...........

Ogbeinama provided the base for the camp over the seven days, the other sites being outreach camps reached by boat. New Foundations supports 10 Health Care Workers and the examples above demonstrate the need for a worker in each community. Simple knowledge of wound care and dressings can make the difference between recovery or possible death from gangrene or septicaemia. Poverty and lack of transport become major factors in deciding how best to treat patients. I suspect that the parents farming committments precluded travel for treatment , but this may well cost the child his life. Should there have been a HCW in his community then his chances would have been better.

Advanced cancers, pneumonias, Parkinsons disease, and suspected HIV were all represented in the camp and the usual array of infective disease, measles, malaria and diarrhoeal illnesses.

Outwith the camps the need for medical care was evident. A child collapsed in Church with a high fever and evidence of anaemia and cerebral malaria. He was treated appropriately and by the next day had recovered. Machete injuries, burns, and dehydrated patients attended at all hours, the base providing a rudimentary A+E dept.

Ekogbene, Ogriabene and Okoloba were outreach camps, were no Health Care worker is based. By the end of the day many were still coming from the bush for treament, bodies gnarled by heavy work and active arthritis.   A child with a cancer within his eye was brought to us, a rare and aggressive cancer requiring specialist care. With subsistence wages there was little one could do. Urinary incontinence from gynaecological cancers, neck tumours and bowel cancer, all in advanced stages suggested unimaginable suffering as they entered a terminal phase without proper pain relief, symptomatic control or care.   In remote island communities where community officials can source a personal motorbike, it seems iniquitous that suffering on this scale should be allowed to continue..............