Life and Death at Malumghat

I'm on call this weekend, which afforded me the opportunity to get involved with aspects of medicine that I'm not exactly used to. Pediatric diarrheal illnesses are straightforward enough, but malaria, OB, seriously? With C-sections, I'm following the see one, do one, teach one model. After assisting with a section on Friday, tonight it was my turn. I did one skin to skin as they say. Anyone need a lesson now that I'm ready?

This week we also lost a child. A 6 year old with 3rd degree burns covering 25% of his body. His story is sad enough to break even the hardest heart. His family's village burned to the ground last year, leaving his family without anything at all. A couple of weeks ago, his twin younger brothers were killed in a freak accident. After the funeral, it is tradition that the family serve a meal to all those that attended the service. As his mother was bring out the meal, she stumbled and spilled the boiling water onto him. His clothes, soaking with boiling water, were difficult to remove and got caught around his neck, resulting in very deep burns to his face. As we excised the burns early this week, we found that an invasive infection had caused all of the soft tissue to become necrotic down to the bone. We proceeded with radical debridement but the next day it was apparent that we were fighting a losing battle as all of the tissue surrounding the excision was dead. He died the next night and joined his brothers were there is no more suffering. For his parents, the suffering continues.