I highly recommend Calvary Methodist Church, right here in Wenchi near the hospital.\u00a0 I went there yesterday and it was an awesome experience.\u00a0 The rest of Sunday was a day to relax and to contemplate my experience so far and what lies ahead.\u00a0 It has been great and I am so thankful that I get to do this.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We started out with a mini cholera clinic today.\u00a0 In developing countries, cholera is a serious problem, especially in rainy seasons and times of flooding.\u00a0 We are in the tail end of Ghanas rainy season.\u00a0 As you know, one of the primary reasons that I am here is to get my Diploma in International Medicine and Public Health.\u00a0\u00a0 I am here to see and to understand by experience what I learned in theory in the hybrid course through INMED.\u00a0 Cholera is one of those diseases\/problems.\u00a0 Treatment is crucial within the first 24 hours, keeping someone hemodynamically stable with more fluid in than is coming out.\u00a0 It has a unique diarrhea, vomiting and sometimes fever.\u00a0 We sent stool culture to lab on all patients.\u00a0 We give antibotics but the primary treatment is fluid replacement…..fast!\u00a0 In this case it was two large IVs on all three patients.\u00a0 Ideally you should isolate these patients quickly since cholera can spread.\u00a0 We did what we could but a third world hospital has few options.\u00a0\u00a0 Well the good news, we succeeded with God’s help on all three patients.\u00a0 As I left today, all three were through the acute stage in the isolation unit that we setup.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We also had a serious laceration with lots of blood loss.\u00a0 The man was brought by foot 8 miles so you can imagine what condition he was in and losing blood from the cut.\u00a0 He was cutting with a machete and cut his hand with a 2 inch deep laceration.\u00a0 Praise God he missed his tendons so it was stop the bleeding, suture him up (inner layer of tissue and then the skin surface), followed by antibiotics and some fluids, including D50 (50% dextrose solution).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Needless to say, we had a very exciting morning and into the early afternoon.\u00a0 Above all, we know that God was with these patients and He was the one who brought them through, we just got to help!\u00a0 (At the morning devotions we prayed for all patients and staff that would be involved today, clearly God was with us).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the midst of all of this we had more malaria and more motor vehicle accidents.\u00a0 We also had two ENT cases with tonsillar involvement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now for the cultural.\u00a0 You would love these people.\u00a0 I learned much today once things settled down a bit.\u00a0 Did you know that in Ghana it is very important to know the day of the week that you were born?\u00a0 That is your name!\u00a0 They say that before you are named you already come with a name….the day of the week.\u00a0 I looked up my birthdate and it was a Tuesday, therefore my name is Kwabena!\u00a0 Cool huh!\u00a0 So I have two names in Ghana, Kwabena and Dennis.\u00a0 There are people that actually have just the day of the week name because the family used that name.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now for a Ghanian economy lesson.\u00a0 These nurses make less than a dollar an hour.\u00a0 You heard me right.\u00a0 They are professionals to the nth degree.\u00a0 They know so much and they practice in very austere conditions.\u00a0 They are very smart and I have never seen a skill set for many things that nurses do in America, any better than I see in these professionals.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 less than a dollar an hour!\u00a0 A motorcycle here costs upwards of $7000 and a Toyota Corolla is upwards of $80000.\u00a0 Yup, you heard that right!\u00a0 So you can imagine how few cars are being driven in this country.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I guess the lesson is, be thankful for the affluence that you have in America.\u00a0 Even America’s poor are rich in the eyes of these people.\u00a0 Oh what we could do if we lived more simply and gave to the poor of the earth.\u00a0 America is less than 5% of the worlds population.\u00a0 If you throw in the rest of the affluent western countries, it is still a fraction of the total.\u00a0 Most of this total lives in conditions like I mentioned above.\u00a0 Oh my!\u00a0 We need to get our values straight.\u00a0 We need to get a heart for the poor.\u00a0 We need to help!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I highly recommend Calvary Methodist Church, right here in Wenchi near the hospital.\u00a0 I went there yesterday and it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/dennissalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}