Community Medical Camps

Community Medical Camps are great to be involved in. As a group of volunteers and trained community health workers (aka the local women that normally work as tailors), we organize to visit communities in the region that don't have access to medical assistance. The reason  behind the no access is not simply because there is no clinics or hospitals in the region, but because families either have no money to treat the sick and injured, or more regularly, they purposely don't seek assistance. May be a cultural or religious thing, especially out near the missionaries, but in two months I have witnessed thousands of children and adults who don't receive the simplest of medical treatment.

Last week we traveled to Nybeda, a small community about 15 minutes off the main highway. Despite the proximity to free health care up the road on the main highway, sadly the vast majority of school children we treated were suffering from various sources of worms other diseases. A poignant sign of a child who is infested with ringworm is white flakey patches on their skull. Some kids only have little patches on their heads, whereas other childens heads are completely covered in flakey white skin. Needless to say that on the kids shaved heads, the ringworm is easily identified. Treatment is super simple, we gave de-worming tablets to all the children from Nursery (4 year olds) to Class 5 (Grade) 5, plus any other child that was infested. All up we de-wormed about 300 kids, which was cool. Handing out the medication involved a class procession - taking names, giving 3 tablets, telling them to eat (chum) and swallow (meza), followed by handing out lollies at the end.
It was actually really easy due to the fact that the majority of kids had never been in contact with a white person so they were more then happy to down the medication. Afterwards the kids that have head infestations get treated with detol and anti fungal cream. After two treatments the kids
are ringworm free, very exciting.

Another problem affecting the community..possibly the saddest and grossest thing I've ever
seen is hookworm of the feet and hands..commonly known an Jiggers. Jiggers are parasites
that live in the dirt and enter the feet and hands through the nails and any cuts or
abrasions present. As about 5% of the kids actually wear shoes, which protect their feet
from the parasite, they are highly susceptible to catching it. Once the Jiggers enter the
feet, they feed off the skin and bury themselves into the flesh until it rots and dies.
As the kids walk around all day without shoes and have extremely poor hygiene and don't wash
their feet each night, the Jiggers eat their way through the kids feet and hands until the
point that their nails drop off and their feet are covered in huge welts and black wart like
bumps of dead skin. If untreated, the condition worsens to a point where the suffer cannot
walk or even move in extreme circumstances. We visited a blind man who hadn't been treated
for two years, remaining souly in his chair in his house (if you could call it that),
unable to move even to outside. It was heart breaking to treat these people who were in so
much pain but could have so easily accessed free medical treatment. The treatment is simply washing the feet and regularly applying betadine to kill the Jiggers.

I treated a gorgeous girl, she was about 7 years old. As I washed her feet, I looked at the under side of her toes. They were so badly infested that they had rotted away to a point she had huge gouges of flesh missing. She was in a huge amount of pain, the poor little darling. She also had multiple infected open wounds up her leg from exposed mossy bites, as well as a huge sore that had skin hanging off it. I patched her up as best I could and she cheered up a bit when we gave her some colouring books to take home, but I only hope that she comes back for her second dose of treatment so we can measure her progress.

We also treated some horrific burns and infections. One girl was presented to me and at first I couldn't tell what was wrong with her, until she turned around I saw that half her head was white, flakey and had rotted down towards her skull by over 1cm. Poor poor girl.

Overall we treated 450 people from the school and community. Next week we will go back to check
on the progress of the ringworm and Jiggers and provide more treatment. The treatment is perfect,
although it's really just a Band-Aid for a bullet hole. Without shoes and proper hygiene Jiggers will be a lifelong problem for the people of many communities including this one we went to. Even
with access to free medical assistance, families refuse to access the resources for themselves and
their children. Some of the kids out here stand no chance, which is appalling. Hopefully with
ongoing treatment and some health education, they can begin to watch for signs and overcome the
huge problems they face.

Although this sounds uber depressing, the teachers and some families were incredibly welcoming
and grateful. It was so cool to get involved in a day that helped so many people and it should be
interesting to do the follow up next week. All day I had this over whelming feeling of gratefulness
that I was born into a country that doesn't have to face these issues at all.

Anyway hope you've enjoyed hearing some more. Go the dees, fingers crossed they'll smash
out their first win soon!

Lots of love, Lucy xxx.