There was a young girl who had just been brought in. I saw straight away that her condition was very serious. She came with the boda-boda (motorbike taxi) and was quickly put to bed. We examined her and it seems she had been pregnant. There were lots of stains and she was already dead. The evening before she was alone at home and had just told that she was pregnant.
She was a 14 year old schoolchild. We thought that she have performed an abortion (here called criminal abortion). Looking lost, her mother watched and the ambulance took the young girl home.
Later I asked Sr. Celestine about the possibility of a post-mortem and she told me that it costs a lot of money for the police to perform a post-mortem. Parents themselves must find out. This is probably the reason why demons still play such an important role here, filling a gap, give an explanation what has happened and who could be responsible... This is how I began my clinic day.
It is called “criminal abortion”but I have my own thoughts about this term. So many young girls who are pregnant have no choice. Availabilities of preventing conception and a possible good education are missing. At present, with the knowledge available, there are many new answers.
- Blood Transfusions-
Later on this day a colleague called me to ask if we have units of stored blood The answer was "no". Blood during the holiday period is a problem. Most school children donate to the blood bank but now they are on holidays. This is why the supply of blood in the blood bank is minimal. Many children die of malaria because of severe anaemia receiving no blood transfusion on time. Later my colleague told me that a young woman gave birth to twins, one of them died and soon after the mother died, too, because there was no blood. We both talked about how powerless you feel when this happens. I realized how remarkable it is in Europe with all the medication and the possibilities to keep death at bay. Here it is punishable to give blood directly if it hasn’t been screened. Better dead than to contract aids is the idea.
Once a father begged me to obtain blood from far away. I was the same blood group and asked Sister if I could give blood. She would not give me permission. It carries a prison sentence here and I don’t know if I would risk that.
Its hard to see people dying because money is missing. Family members have to go home and look for money, they have to sell a chicken, goat or a cow to pay for the medical treatment which is nearly unimaginable for us. On the other hand you can give everything for free.
...feeling powerless and arrogant on the same time when seeing all these problems, knowing there have been found solutions for some of the problems in other countries.