DRC, Day 5: Last Day at the Hospital

Today was, with any luck, my last day at Kitona Military Hospital. Hopefully forever.

                

The work day started with the pediatrics ward, where I did rounds with the doctors and nurses. Although their antibiotic selection seemed better than it was in June, they also had fewer patients, so it was hard to tell. Also, they’re still treating anything with fever as “malaria”, even if the malaria tests are negative, so that’s a little frustrating. I’m not sure what it’s going to take to change that practice. Probably getting to the doctors when they’re still in medical school. I’m sure that’s where they’re getting this information, that everything that looks like malaria clinically must be malaria.

Seeing a patient with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis

                

They also had a five-year-old girl with Down Syndrome, and they kept asking me how we treat Down Syndrome in the States. They couldn’t understand when I said that there was no treatment. I think they couldn’t grasp that there was anything that we couldn’t treat or cure.

                

I was spared from having to stand in on a cesarean section by MAJ Lang, who came by to pick me to take to see the water distribution center for most of the base. It was actually off-base, and it was pretty obvious that nothing had been done to improve the area since 1954 (we joked about that; we’re talking about getting tee-shirts that say, “Kitona Military Base. Unimproved since 1954” since that’s the year that people always give when you ask when something was last fixed.) It used to be a water treatment and distribution center, but we’re guessing that when something at the “treatment” stage of that broke, they just redirected the pipes to turn it into a distribution center only. The infrastructure is still there, but a lot of the stuff is too old and corroded to be of much use. MAJ Lang said his solution would be to scrap the old treatment center and add a smaller, semi-portable set-up (like what we used in Iraq and still use in Afghanistan) to the pipe at some point.

MAJ Lang studying the settling tank with the FARDC engineer and a water employee

                

That was pretty much our day, so we headed back to the hotel and worked on our reports and whatnot. After finishing that (and taking a nap), we headed to dinner at the New Cliffs and prepared for tomorrow. There’s going to be a “sensing session” (when people can air their complaints) with the female soldiers/officers tomorrow morning, so I might go to that, to see what the complaints of the female service members in the FARDC are.