9 days. 3 type of drugs. 8 different nurses. 5 collapsed veins. 20+ pokes.
This past week has been a tough one for my Mum. Since our Emergency Room rush on Sunday night, it has been a roller coaster ride of high temperatures, low blood pressure, antibiotics, anti-virals, anti-fungals and a daringly low hemoglobin of 59.
When the hospital becomes your home, when you are surrounded by beeping machines and the unpleasant aromas of animated neighbours (I’d rather not delve into these details!), it is easy to get discouraged. But there is immense value in taking a step back.
If we take a few million steps back to East Africa and think about the health care system, it certainly puts life into perspective. A few weeks ago, I facilitated a workshop with nurses in a rural district in Kenya to understand the challenges they face. For many, it takes over an hour to reach the dispensary by foot and when they arrive, they are greeted by a long queue of community members who arose at the crack of dawn to seek medical attention. Their quality of care is often limited by frequent drug stock-outs and poor equipment. They cite staff shortage as one of their major issues – with one or two nurses at the most managing the clinical, administrative and financial components of the facilities by themselves. These nurses are constantly constrained by time, by money, by equipment, by cultural practices. The words not enough and lack of were spoken much too often. And in a rural community, not enough and lack of equate to the loss of livelihoods, the loss of economic prosperity and often, the loss of life.
been, I cannot help but imagine, if my Mum were being treated in one of the health facilities I frequented in rural East Africa, there would have been no nurse available to monitor her vitals every hour and administer the medications she needed to get better – the shortage of nurses (38 nurses to a 100,000 population) would have made this impossible. For the last 9 days, I have sung to my Mum as technicians drew her blood to check her white blood cell and neutrophil counts for the day. As hard as it is to see my Mum cry, I cannot help but imagine if we were in rural East Africa, it would take days to get the results of simple blood tests like these – as only 25% of facilities have laboratory services. For the last 9 days, I triple-checked the antibodies listed on blood being transfused to my Mum when her hemoglobin dropped suddenly. But if we were in a rural East African district, the likelihood of blood in stock for an emergency transfusion is highly questionable; and a well-matched blood cross-checked for 3 different antibodies – that would have been impossible to find.-Sabrina
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