Thursday afternoon

Thursday afternoon, blogging after medical students failed to show up for previously-arranged tutorial. There seems to be some laxity with regard to time here. It doesn't help that I have no phone to be contacted by if there needs to be a schedule change.

I've included a picture of the house where I'm staying as well as the building that houses the general medical ward. I just realized they look disconcertingly similar. The house I live in is also occupied by two Belgian medical students and David, who is an epidemiologist from Glasgow. It's basically like student housing with a shared kitchen and two shared bathrooms. It's not ideal, but you can't complain when it's free.

I went on rounds with a British pediatrician today, just to see what was happening with the little people here. The child mortality rate is high, and most die before they could get health care. Most births are home births - which is fine - but most of them are completely unattended. Jason, the pediatrician, basically runs the NICU, which right now contains 6 babies, all 1-2 kg in weight, several born at approximately 30 weeks. They are doing well though, since mostly they just need breast milk via a nasogastric tube and occasionally antibiotics for infection. One baby probably has a ventricular septal defect based on his exam. The problem is the ultrasound machine is not good enough to see that small of a defect. The plan is to let him get a little bigger, then hopefully refer him to somewhere that can do surgery to close the defect for free.