On a resent medical mission to Jamaica we were able to visit with Tony and Angela Brown. We have been involved with their ministry for a number of years.
They work in a small fishing village near Montego Bay. In addition to ministering to the Spiritual needs of the village , they have started a preschool for the children in the village. This "head start" program is giving children a love of learning and a hope for their future. You can sponsor a child for $20.00 a month.
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Pediatric ward at Kigoma Baptist Hospital in far western Tanzania.
Tedi with her father
Tedi’s young father was considered to be a pest by some of the ward staff but those of us aware to the details of his daughter’s case knew better. No matter how early we arrived to round, he was always at the entrance of the ward awaiting any update and to make sure that we saw his daughter. Tedi is a 6 year old girl who fell out of a tree 3 months ago while playing and broke her left upper arm in two places.
Coming from a poor rural Tanzanian farming family earning $2 per day, they bound the arm hoping for the best
. 6 weeks ago two sites on the arm opened up draining pus. Since then, the family has traveled to a number of rural hospitals, using every shilling they had to find a cure for their daughter who now had a shortened left arm from the non-reduced fracture and is chronically ill from her osteomyelitis (infection of the bone—see X-ray). All of the treatments were poorly chosen and inadequate without surgical management. Her parent’s persistence brought her to this mission hospital but we have no orthopedic surgeons in this part of Tanzania. On the coast of Tanzania, 3 days travel by bus, there is a US trained pediatric infectious disease specialist and a Tanzanian orthopedic surgeon at the Arusha Lutheran Medical Center who would work together to try to save the arm of this intelligent little girl. The surgeries and very prolonged stay (estimated at 30 days) for antibiotics and rehab will be very expensive and not a possibility for this family. Tedi’s complex treatment and long hospitalization will cost $1500. If you would like to contribute toward this girl’s medical care please let us know. We will keep you updated.
Temi with her mother
For years now we have been seeing young patients in many countries who are suffering the long term effects of Rheumatic heart disease. If discovered early, treatment can prevent the progression.
This is why we have been teaching the rapid Echocardioloy screening method (Mentioned in a previous blog post). For those who already have advanced destruction of their valve, the only hope is to fix the valve or replace it with an artificial valve. As you can imagine, valve replacement is rarely available and very expensive when it can be done. It also requires the patient to commit to lifelong blood thinning and frequent expensive testing.
A few years ago we went to Nepal to learn a procedure where we could fix the valve without surgery. By passing a catheter to the heart and puncturing a hole across from the right side to the left atrium, we can put a balloon through the valve, inflate it and open the valve (which has been stuck closed with scar from the rheumatic fever). As far as we could tell, this has never been done outside of an expensive cardiac catheterization lab.
With much prayer, we did our first cases in February of 2014 at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya. We were able to do 14 cases with good results using only C-arm fluoroscopy instead of having a cath lab. Dr Rajib from Nepal came to Kenya to assist us. Last year we were able to fix 12 more hearts.
Pascal always wanted to be able to play football (soccer) with his friends, now he can!
With this procedure patients are able to be discharged to home he next day and are not required to be on blood thinning medication. Our goal is to teach this procedure to local staff so that eventually no child from sub-Sahara Africa will be more than one border away from this life saving procedure.