I am sorry to say that we lost the battle with cholera today on one of our patients. He was 24 years old and otherwise healthy. He was weak yesterday but doing well with rapid fluid rehydration and doxycycline. He took a turn for the worst over night and sadly, he passed away this morning shortly after I went in. This was a tough one. Cholera is nasty and comes from contaminated food and water. There are limited human resources in a place like this and limited ability to handle the acute phase of something like cholera. Infection control is also a challenge due to the lack of facilities and supplies. All in all, healthcare can be a success in a low resource setting but today, we had a casualty.
How about a mining accident. There is alot of mining in the reaches of this hospital and with mining comes accidents. This particular accident was from a gold mine (yes, this is the gold coast!). On one of the blasts there was a partial collapse and we had the four victims come in the ER. I think all will be okay. There is a pretty nasty head injury on one of the patients but the x-ray looks okay (no CT scan here). The other patients had multiple lacerations and a broken femur but we made progress. I sutured one of the smaller lacerations and some other care was done in the theatre.
I am definitely getting the experience that I came here for, and in the process, I am falling in love with Ghana!