Four Weeks Left!

This week myself and Kadie, the district nutritionist, ran two one-day training courses for all the paediatric ward staff on assessing and managing acute severe malnutrition. The Kambia Appeal kindly paid for refreshments (a spicy egg roll and tea for breakfast, and a cooked meal of ground nuts and meat the first day and plassas (spicy pounded cassava leaves, a local dish) and rice on the second day. Apparently training events without food will not be well attended! The food went down well and I think everyone enjoyed the training, the feedback was all very positive. It was so good doing the training with Kadie, who could teach in Krio, and also had a much better idea of local ideas and practices. 

Our hope from the training is that the staff will now be motivated and able to prepare milk for the children ‘out of hours’, which for various reasons, is not done at the moment.

We had hoped this training would co-inside with moving into the SC (stabilization centre) or malnutrition ward, but we are still awaiting a tent or alternative accommodation for any potential cholera cases…

The paediatric ward has been very busy; and there are now two children to most beds. Stocks of artesunate (new(ish) treatment for severe malaria) are rapidly being used up… I am assured there are more stocks in Freetown that have been requested but even the pharmacist, who is encouraging us to use the drug for all cases of severe malaria in children, isn’t sure when more will arrive. It’s so difficult to know whether we should be rationing its use or not.

We have also had a problem with TB drugs. TB should be treated for 6 months with a combination of drugs, and there’s big problems worldwide with multi drug resistant TB, as resistance develops if people stop and start treatment or don’t complete the course. A couple of weeks ago the hospital had run out of TB drugs…for at least a week, and there were rumours that there were no TB drugs in Sierra Leone…. The implications are massive. We’re not sure if it’s a knock on effect from half of the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health being sacked (some scandal involving money). I was told today there’s a problem with the funding. There are still no paediatric TB drugs, so after much discussion, we have been cutting up the adult tablets to give the children, it’s not ideal but better than nothing.

Can’t think of much more news now. Myself, Lorraine and Mary are all trying to tie things up before we go home in a few weeks time. Noemi is here until September, and Hannah until early next year. More volunteers are expected in August, and will hopefully take over some of the things we have been working on, it’s nice to know there is some continuity when we’re here for a relatively short time.

The generator is about to go off so I will stop now, and conserve battery power for tomorrow!