3 days at Pothawira - some graphic photos!

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday at Pothawira. For those of you who do not know, Pothawira ('safe haven') is an orphanage with 128 kids, housed in duplexes with ten children and a mommie on each side of the duplex. Unfortunately, the numbers are over what they should be - how do you turn away a child to certain death? So each mommie has more like 11-12 kids. The have a dining hall for meals (3 a day), and a primary school with hopes to build a secondary school. There is a clinic seeing 200-300 patients a day and a birthing center that we hope will be open next year. Anyone interested in donating to these projects, please look up Pothawira at Global Orphan project or through Global Health Innovations.

Monday was very busy, but slowly it improved. We are still seeing lots of malaria (it is close to the lake, so there are pools and puddles all around, abounding in mosquitos). The children with malaria almost all have a 'knitted brow' appearance. They look miserable. Their complaints can be from headache to body aches, gastrointestinal complaints (vomiting and diarrhea, as well as pain) are common. So are weird rashes and mouth sores. The older kids and adults have that same miserable look. A constant reminder to take my malaria prophylaxis.  We also see wounds - often on the heels / feet of children riding on the back of bikes. We also see tropical ulcers - an infection usually on the lower extremities that starts from some minor trauma and blossoms into huge, painful ulcers in a matter of days. Occasional burns come in - most people cook over an open fire, so burns happen.

You will find some photos below - many are of the clinic and the orphanage / school but some are of patients - some graphic so be prepared!

Pray for these people, as we try to help them with limited resources.

David, clinical officer who is in his 4th (of 6) year of med school, he is a great help to Peter when he is on holiday!

My office

The hall out side of my office (this was before the clinic opened this morning)

Signage on the walls

Treatment room before it is overflowing with patients

Pharmacy with Joey already counting pills

View of the orphan duplexes

School room

Sign on the main road.

Infected lip laceration

Tropical ulcer on a little boys leg

Trench mouth

Fresh wound (we usually don't see these 0 most are days old). Little boy caught his heel in the bike. Luke cleaned and sutured

End result looks great. We usually see these 3-4 days of, with infection set in and a gaping wound. Hopefully thrice weekly bandage changes and antibiotics will help this little guy heal well!

Woman chopped of the ends of a couple of fingers while using a machete to cut weeds.

Bike accident, already infected and draining pus... about 4 days old (the wound, not the child)