20100921 by Tom

Today was the day Maria and Tom was to be talking to sister Jane about spending money on the MMH. The mumbling session was rather brief but none had died and that was that. Sister Erna had had her second last night and was rather outspoken about the general lack of vital medicin, in this particular case oxytocin (a drug given to women who have just delivered a baby to contract the uterus and avoid unnecessary bleeding). There was only three capsules in the hospital said Erna and that was not enough for the coming week. After the mumbling session we had to wait for a quarter of an hour to meet Sister Jane. She was all in favour for a general sum of money going into the coffin of MMH, or a sum of money to buy foodstuff for the patients. Maria and Tom wanted something more tangible so we settled for a refurbishment of a waiting-room for children. It was to be made in the former OPD next to the lab. We will have a draft this week we hope. There is some money left after the autoclave sins Mike has got money from the state, within a program for promoting bacteriological work. Maria and Jane has obviously made a quick one sins Maria has gone to Luanshya to collect some cash.
The morning round started rather late as we had a longish talk with sister Jane. There was quite a lot of patients but a lot of things ordered yesterday were not done so I had to be stern again. I also learned from the nurses student that was my aide, that they never do shunts on hydrocephalus’s ere in Zambia. They do a scan and then tuck them away to die from various reasons. It grew hotter and hotter as the day went on and you could feel it in the ward. The smaller children were not at their best. The air stood still even if the windows were all open. In the burns ward there is always a bit warmer than elsewhere the temperature was formidable. We have four burns there now, all burnt by cooking water and they are < than 10 % all of them. They start crying when you get near to them, just in case, and are generally speaking having pain all the time. By the time I got home Maria had gone to Luanshya to get some money for the hospital. We donated the money to the hospital kitchen to get it over a sudden failure to get stuff to make decent food for the patients. As we were sitting in the back lawn of the doctors house in the quickly darkening evening a midwife arrived. She happened to walk by and used the opportunity to inform us that a farewell-party in the honours of dr Okoko and sister Erna was to take place in our garden on Friday. We were invited to participate in this party the hospital was throwing in the afternoon. As it grew quite dark we had to retire to the interior. Maria was trying to get some fashion to her project by sorting her patients in different ways. It was comparatively easy as she had put them all into an Excel-spreadsheet for calculating and statistics. She might present her data on the Friday mumbles.