The days after my first week have been intriguing with surprises and appreciation of the health of the people in the community simultaneously. I began the week with a small gift donated to the hospital.
I have been working closely along with Dr. Yakubu, my supervisor from the pediatric wards, across the adult male and female wards and the maternity ward including clinic days.
Proceeding from the pediatric wards, we have been managing cases of neonatal sepsis, severe dehydration due to diarrhea diseases, and upper and lower respiratory tract infections and malaria.
One of the challenges encountered was a parent who had home delivery without a trained healthcare birth attendant. She couldn’t tell the age of her baby and the baby was malnourished. It was difficult to know the accurate weight to estimate the age of the baby.
There was an opportunity to have two caesarian section cases with Dr. Yakubu. The first case was an obstructed labor with occiput posterior presentation and the other was severe oligohydramnios also with breech presentation. Both surgeries were successful and the newborns are doing well.
The use of ultrasound here at BMC is indispensable in diagnosing ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy and other gynecological conditions. We can’t do quantitative beta –hCG here.
I have also encountered patients with misleading information which make investigation and diagnosis difficult.
A case in point, was a patient who presented with lower abdominal pain. Her urine pregnancy test was positive but ultrasound investigation shows no product of conception in the uterus. We were suspecting ectopic pregnancy until proven otherwise and abortion. Interestingly, the patient denies of any form of engagement that leads to pregnancy and she was surprised of her UPT results because she emphatically states that, she is unmarried and or has no sexual partner.
There have been cases of Cerebrovascular accidents (CVA) at the adult male and female wards. Due to limited resources, we had to rely on clinical judgment to ascertain the cause of the CVA (either ischemic or hemorrhagic). There is no computed Tomography (CT) at BMC.
I still advocate that, community health education and patients’ education are essential part of the well-being and the socio economic development of the populations in poor and low resource countries.
Most adult patients are hypertensive without knowing because, they have no health education, screening and hardly ever gone to a healthcare center for a medical checkup.
Patients’ education on their own health and their families should not be unmarked but must be highly encouraged in poor and low resource countries once they visit the healthcare centers for any medical reason.