Backporch medicine

I try to stay away from the clinical side of medicine. I honestly believe that focusing on prevention and basics to promote good health will do more good for more people overall. So, I work on things like getting churches to have hand-washing stations and latrines so they can be an example and teachers of the communities. Nonetheless, people come to me for help. Whenever possible, I try to send them to the health system we have here, even with all its shortcomings. However, sometimes mercy demands that you try to help, so sometimes I try. For example, a single mother with two children, who lives near me asks for malaria tablets for her son who is running a fever. I know she is barely managing to get enough food from day to day-- she lives off of lots of odd jobs of manual labor such as digging fields. Before, when I referred her to the hospital she waited all day, and had to buy some items such as gloves so her child would be seen. After a full day, she got a diagnosis (malaria) but no treatment. Often the hospitals run out of drugs which are supposed to be given free and patients have to buy them. She has little enough money for food right now. So, this time, I give her some Coartem tablets. Another case, a Ugandan nurse has an employee injured in a bicycle accident and she comes to me for help. I think she didn't have any bandages. I help her with first aide supplies (kindly donated by Jere Bethune) and have her clean and bandage the wounds. Last week, a man named Christopher and his wife brought his son to me. They had already been through the local hospital trying to get help for their developmentally delayed son. He has trouble holding his head upright and isn't sitting up yet. I told them this was not an area I was trained in, but they really wanted me to try to help them as they had nowhere else to go. Our next medical team isn't coming until December, and I am not sure if they will include physical/occupational therapists this time. I got him a book to study on helping village children with disabilities and we found some exercises and suggestions on making your own aides. Hopefully that will help him until the December medical team comes and hopefully they can take it from there. Here there are always many people looking for help, and death is far too common. Here if somebody is ill at home or hospitalized, all their friends rush to see them. If you're sick, everyone comes to visit--they don't want to delay seeing you in case you will die. I've been here long enough now that I understand that. Here you shouldn't think "Oh, they're hospitalized now; they'll get care and be OK," as for too many a hospital is just a place to die. Some here even die at home without even an over-the-counter dose of painkiller. In many ways Uganda is a great place to live: great climate, beautiful country, friendly people, incredible wildlife. However, it isn't a good place to be ill or injured.