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On the way back, we spent the night at a health center that was outside of MSFs ‘radius’ of support. In late 2008, the NGO that had been supporting this heath center (and many others) suddenly lost its funding and abruptly pulled out of Katanga.
Blamed on the global economic crisis, this departure suddenly left 21 health centers across two regions without adequate medical supplies. The health center where we stayed was no different. They had nothing…and what little was there was expired. No antibiotics. No drugs for simple malaria treatment. Not even a thermometer.
Doctor Grant
We pulled up at 5:30 pm and I was immediately called inside to see a 2-year-old girl with a severe case of malaria. For me, this is one of the hardest parts about working with MSF. Patients and health centers and hospitals are all pretty new for me but I manage ok. It is when I walk into a clinic or hospital as a white expat wearing my MSF T-shirt and it is assumed that I am a doctor that it gets a bit uncomfortable! Hard to explain to a mother with her sick daughter in her arms that I’m (just) the logistician and not actually able to do anything to help…
I am not a doctor. But part of my job as a logistician is to make sure that every car leaves the base with a fully stocked emergency medical kit for cases just like this one. I opened the kit and asked the Ministry of Health nurse if I had what he needed. I did. He was so grateful and, within an hour, an injection had been given, a drip had been setup and the child’s fever was going down.
“Saving Lives and Alleviating Suffering”
She made it through the night but still needed a blood transfusion…so at 6:00 am the next morning we loaded her into our land cruiser and transferred her to the MSF hospital in Shamwana. Both parents were asked to come along in hopes that one of them would be a compatible blood donor for their child….
She got the blood transfusion and she lived.
Malaria is the number 1 killer of children under 5 in Africa….but at least this was one less case for the statisticians!
The incredible part of this whole situation was that there was a Ministry of Health nurse at the health center and he actually knew what to do. Physically, there was a health center. There were patients. The only thing that was missing was the medicine! It is so painful to know that everything else is in place, but without NGOs providing drugs the whole system falls apart!
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