Four days ago I was summoned to the Kalukembe Hospital, 100 miles outside of the city of Lubango. Now Lubango has paved roads (some places), electricity, (sometimes), and running water (somedays). But in the outback of Kalukembe life has changed little in hundreds of years: simples houses built of dried adobe bricks, fields of corn and potatoes cultivated entirely by hand, and extended families with one set of clothes each living around wood fires. One child in three dies before reaching five, and few people live into their forties – succumbing to the entirely preventable diseases of malaria, TB and HIV. In this community rests the Kalukembe Hospital – the only vestige of modern health care. 150 beds, filled 24/7 with local residents fighting for their lives against these diseases of poverty. And to their aid, a dedicated, talented staff of Angolan nurses – nurses who diagnose & treat, reduce fractures, and perform Caesarians.
These nurses, few of whom have anything beyond a high school education, rising to the occasion to care for their own, inspire me beyond words. What’s more, they’ve had no resident doctor since 1994! Today I was led to maternity, where I met Sonya; a girl of fifteen with twins who’d been in labor for FOUR DAYS. Sonya’s blood pressure was undetectable, she was bleeding from below, and one baby’s arm was hanging out. Clearly all three of them were about to die. We managed to get in some life-saving medications, and I delivered the twins. One, tragically, had already died, and I was tearing up. But as I stepped out to where Sonya’s family was waiting, and witnessed their celebration and singing and clapping, I realized that for them, her survival was simply miraculous, and that here the African bush, a precious child who’d been counted as lost was now in the rejoicing arms of her family.