It has been a busy time this past week and a half! As Always there are too few hours and too many jobs to be done.
We start our mornings usually between 4 and 5 AM. and we finish each night about 8 or 9 PM. There are animals to feed and watered twice a day; pigs, chickens, ducks, goats, and rabbits. Then the goats must be "pastured" 2 to 3 times a day. Monday through Friday food has to be purchased and prepared for sale in our little eatery ( we are lucky to make $10 to $20 profit in a week but it helps people who would not have a nutritious meal otherwise!
The sign was hand drawn and painted by someone here on Pilar. Not bad for all freehand!
Here is a photo of our "restaurant" form the main street in the main town on Pilar, about 1 mile from our house/clinic! The bottom line says "Best Food On The Island" and I believe it is the truth!!!!
We also must either go to Ormoc City once a week ourselves, or get someone on the crew of the boat, to purchase food and supplies. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes each way to ride the boat!
Here is a picture of the boat leaving the dock in Pilar, heading to Ormoc City, Leyte. It Takes about an hour and twenty minutes each way if the weather is good and the engine is working normally!
You can see the jeepneys parked on the pier. They come from as far away as the south end of the island carrying passengers, livestock and cargo to be transported to Ormoc City!
Those are the mountains on Leyte. You are looking east at about 8:30 AM. Very beautiful sight, I never get tired of seeing it no matter how many times I have seen it before!
The white object in the center of the photo is a ferry that travels to Cebu, a city about 35 miles away. The large building on the right side of the picture is the hotel Don Felipe.
This is a photo of another boat leaving toe dock in Ormoc City as we are approaching the dock from Pilar island. Perhaps this will give everyone some idea of the appearance and size of the boats we use to go back and forth in!
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Then there are our patients to look after and teach basic health sanitation and nutrition to! We truly love helping these people as best we can! It is such a joy to see the people after they have gotten well and are able to work in the fields and/or spend the day or night out fishing in their little boats, trying to have enough to feed their families for the day!
This is an 88 year old matriarch of a family! She had been having a fever and a productive cough for about a week and has a history of chronic, but stable, hip pain from arthritis!
We saw her back in followup about a week later after treating her for bronchitis and her arthritic hip and she was doing great! She walked to our house/clinic, a distance of at least 2 to 3 miles as she lives up on the side of a steep mountain without electricity or running water.
This is a closeup of a young man's upper arm. He came to seek medical attention after he had been bitten by a spider while he was working on a boat at the south end of the island. Fortunately is was not a very poisonous bite and with some conservative, symptomatic care he recovered nicely in a few days!
Here is the same patient a few days later when we saw him back for followup!
This is a 3 year old little girl with her mother. The mother brought her to be seen for an earache and fever for 3 days. Her temperature was 102 F and she had a significant middle ear infection. We were able to treat her with antibiotics and Tylenol. When we saw the in church the following Sunday she was running and playing as though she was never sick!
Here is another photo of her and her mother while I was completing her exam.
This is a 1 year old baby with persistent tongue lesions. She was first thought to have a yeast infection but did not respond to the usual treatment for oral yeast infections. In fact, she seemed to get somewhat worse and had bitten her tongue a few times while sleeping.
We took her to see a pediatrician in Ormoc City who felt that it was a viral infection and prescribed the medications he felt that she needed.
There has been some minimal improvement, but we remain quite concerned, as she has a difficult time with eating or drinking, and of course it is no easy task to keep the lesions cleaned.
There has actually been some erosion involving the tip of her tongue. I am afraid that she will require further specialty medical attention in Cebu City and right now we have expended all of our cash reserves and are awaiting financial assistance!
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We thought that we would try to show you around our little island during this blog post as well as spotlight a few of our patients. We hope that you enjoy it!
This is a large Limestone outcropping that is close to our house.
The entire island is made out of limestone. The white line crossing the outcropping near the bottom of the photo is the main water pipe for the island!
This is one type of native fencing material. It is dead palm fronds woven between posts to create a fence, though fragile it may be!
This is a young field of native corn.
You can not truly appreciate how steep the hillside is, but you can get some idea of how rocky and poor the soil is.
This is another view of part of the same corn field.
You will notice the large limestone bolder right in the middle. It was just too large to break apart with just a heavy steel bar!
This is another picture of the same corn field from the other side of the curve in the road.
If yo look closely you can get some appreciation of the steepness of the hillside!
Here is a closeup of a section of the cut on the side of the hill.
I want to try to give you a better idea of the poor quality of the ground that people must try to grow crops on and raise the food with which they are to survive!
Typically there is only one or two ears (small) per stalk of corn when it is finally ready to harvest!
This is our neighbor's house.
Is very typical of the housing of most of the population on the island of Pilar! No electricity, no running water, no indoor bathroom!
This is a picture of our garden.
My wife, Rhome, is on the right and the lady on the left is Norma. She is a patient of ours in whom we diagnosed TB.
It took about $ 400 dollars US to get her to Ormoc City, be seen by a physician and then have a chest CT with contrast (after her labs showed that she had normal kidney function. She is now on the correct medications and is already feeling much better. She offered to help us in our garden and brought some vegetables from her garden and a chicken too!
If you wonder why we have so many pictures of the native corn crops growing on the island, it is to show you what poor soil some of the farmers have to work with.
The one crop that is growing on the side of a steep hill close to our house is more limestone than soil. The people had to use a heavy steel bar to dig through the limestone and, one by one, create little pockets to plant each corn seed!
We have been very blessed by two members of our church back in Carson City, Nevada, Jack and his wife, Melanie! They have been working tirelessly to help research ways that we can help the farmers with their corn crops here on the island.
Besides the many areas of very poor soil, there is often no money for any fertilizer and there is no ability to provide irrigation! They must pray for rain!
I know, it sounds crazy to have to pray for rain in the tropics, but there has been a severe drought for most of the past year. You see El Nino here produces drought. The poor farmers take their precious seed corn saved from last year's crop and plant it and, pray for rain! Many of the farmers this past year used up all of their seed corn trying to get a crop to grow, but without rain, the crops weathered and died or did not even sprout at all! The same fate awaited their other vegetable crops!
Little or no food equals starvation and disease!
Even though there is a water supply here on the island, many can not afford to connect and pay the monthly fee! They must travel, often by foot, to the nearest public water station (a water faucet) and fill whatever containers they have and then bring them back to their houses.
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There have also been severe tropical storms here in the Philippines this year; China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Hong Kong have also been affected! We luckily, have, by God's abiding grace, been spared the worst of the wind and flooding so far!
This is a graphic that does a pretty good job of identifying three severe tropical storms and a couple of low pressure areas with the potential to become tropical storms or typhoons!
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Just recently I came across an article about "counterfeit" drugs being shipped and marketed, on a large scale, in east Africa! I will include part of the article here. The poor people here in the Philippines, the few fortunate enough to have a few pesos to buy medications, are victimized in the same manner and to the same degree!
CNN.com
9 Tons of Fake Medicine Seized in East Africa
* The two-month operation was conducted in six nations
* The counterfeit medicine problem has grown in recent years
* Fake drugs can lead to death, World Health Organization says
(CNN) -- Authorities have seized 9,072 kilograms (20,000 pounds) of counterfeit medicine and arrested 80 people suspected of illegal trafficking in six East African nations, Interpol said Thursday.
More than 300 premises were checked or raided in the two-month operation across Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zanzibar, according to a news release from the international police agency.
The confiscated loot included anti-malaria drugs, vaccines and antibiotics. There was also a significant quantity of government medicines diverted to illegal resale markets.
It was the third such seizure operation in as many years in East Africa, intended to curb the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit medical products.
Representatives of the six nations are scheduled to meet in Zanzibar next week to discuss the seizure and the extent of the counterfeiting problem, Interpol said.
The World Health Organization defines counterfeit drugs as "medicine, which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source."
Counterfeiting can apply to both brand-name and generic products, and forged products may include those with the correct ingredients or with the wrong ingredients, without active ingredients, with insufficient active ingredients, or with fake packaging, WHO says.
The United Nations agency created a global task force in 2006 to deal with the problem, which has been growing as international markets expand and become globalized and internet commerce has taken off.
The fake products can prove detrimental to public health efforts in disease-ridden countries and in worst-case scenarios can cause death, according to the WHO task force.
© 2008 Cable News Network."
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There were also several policemen on the next island that were ambushed and killed by a communist guerrilla group last week!
Published August 21, 2010 Associated Press
Communist Rebels Kill 8 Police Officers In Ambush In Central Philippines, Seize Weapons
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Communist rebels killed eight police officers in the central Philippines and took their weapons and uniforms in an ambush Saturday as they escalate attacks against security forces.
The New People's Army guerrillas killed a local council member in Northern Samar province's Catarman township then lay in wait for soldiers or police to respond.
They planted explosives and took up ambush positions on a road into the village. When a police truck carrying the officers passed by, the rebels set off a land mine then fired on the officers in the burning vehicle, killing all eight. The rebels seized seven pistols and four assault rifles from the slain officers, who were also stripped of their uniforms. Unexploded mines have been recovered along the road.
The Maoist rebels, who have been waging a 41-year-old insurgency, have become more active in recent months, attacking remote military and police outposts to seize badly needed weapons. Last month, the rebels ambushed soldiers on an army truck in Bontoc township in northern Mountain Province, killing seven and seizing their firearms.
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Then finally, there was a significant volcano eruption Sunday in Indonesia!
Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- A volcano that had been inactive for more than 400 years erupted in Indonesia early Sunday, causing thousands of people to flee their homes, officials said.
Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province had been inactive since the 1600s, but spewed volcanic ash nearly a mile into the air Sunday. We don't know the character of this volcano because it's been dormant for so long,
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Well I guess that brings everyone up to date for now!
Please feel free to offer your comments about our work and our blog!
I will close on a lighter note with a couple of quotes that I read recently:
"Life with out God is like an unsharpened pencil! It has no point!"
"Just because you go to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore that standing in your garage makes you a car!"
God Bless Us Everyone!
Chip & Rhome Nuttall
Christian Medical Missionaries
Pilar Camotes, Cebu, Philippines
pilarchip1@mac.com
Thank you for your posts Chip. The 88 year old matriarch is my aunt in my father side. Nanay Lourdes. She's looking good and healthy. -roy
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