The drought brought on by El Nino seems to have finally ended after a severe year long drought!
We are in the process of replenishing the seed corn that was lost during the drought with the help of an agronomist and his wife, Jack and Melanie! They have been and remain a true blessing from God! There remains much work to do but we are confident that our Lord will provide everything that is needed in His time!
There is a huge increase of Dengue fever cases throughout the Philippines! The total number of cases just from January 2010 through August of 2010 has increased more than 85%! Dengue claimed 369 lives in all of 2009, this year 501 fatalities were recorded in the first 8 months of this year. In 2009 34,997 dengue cases were recorded from Jan1 to Aug 28. This year dengue cases have reached over 77,000 during the same period.
We have not been immune to the epidemic of Dengue Fever her in this area as well. While I do not have a detailed breakdown of the number of cases, I can say that it is very worrisome to everyone! We have just obtained the release of one three year old girl from the hospital in Ormoc City. Unfortunately, a friend of hers, another 3 year old girl died despite hospitalization!
These are a couple of pictures of a 3 year old girl who required hospitalization because of Dengue Fever. The first picture also shows her mother who is quite overjoyed that her daughter is nearing the day she can go home!
Here she is just an hour or so before her discharge and she is very happy that she will be able to go home with her mother!
She was the fortunate one, as her 3 year old playmate died of
Dengue Fever, despite being hospitalized!
I have listed a number of patients in this post as "bronchitis," but I have some serious concerns that, in fact, at least a couple of them may have really been Dengue Fever patients. To make a confirmatory diagnosis would have required us to transport them to Ormoc City, Leyte for evaluation by a physician and to undergo blood testing. Even then the diagnosis would be presumptive, because the rapid test kits for Dengue are not available in this area!
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This woman had a history of a high fever, dry cough, headache, and aching joints and muscles. She is one of the patients that I was worried about having Dengue fever! We treated her symptomatically and kept a close watch over her just in case her symptoms would worsen. By God' grace she improved slowly and is now doing much better!
This is a 3 year old little girl who has symptoms of fever and cough along with a stomach ache! Her lungs were clear and her abdominal exam was benign. We treated her symptomatically and she too slowly improved and is now her precocious self!
This is a 10 year old girl who presented with a high fever, chills, cough, headache and generalized muscle aches. Her lung exam did show some course breath sounds but no signs of a pneumonia! Her older sister also developed very similar symptoms a few days later!
We treated them both symptomatically, but as their "house" was in an area that had an abundance of mosquitoes, we purchased mosquito nets for the family.
They are both doing fine and love the mosquito nets, the first time they have ever not been covered in bites!
This young girl was bought to us by her mother because she had worsening cough and fever for 3 days. Her lung exam did so some consolidation and we started her on antibiotics and Tylenol. Within 2 to 3 days she was much improved and her fever had resolved and her lung exam was much improved!
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This young fisherman came to us because he had pain in both of his eyes, left worse than right, and would awaken with his eyelid "glued" shut. This had been going on for almost 5 days and was getting worse.
This is a closeup of the young fisherman. His eye exam was consistent with conjunctivitis of both eyes, but with significantly worse involvement in his left eye. We started him on antibiotic eye medication and warm compresses 4 times a day and instructed him to not go fishing for at least 2 to 3 days. That was very difficult because that is how he provides food for his family! He did follow our recommendations and his eyes were much improved after 3 days!
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This is an 8 year old who was brought to us by his father.
He had had and area of irritation just above the medial aspect of his right ankle that had become infected and had progressively worsened over the preceding 3 weeks.
We cleaned the area thoroughly, debrided the necrotic tissue, applied a antibiotic cream and a sterile dressing (which was changed twice a day) and started him on oral antibiotics.
The area showed marked improvement within 3 days and is now completely healed! He says he wants to become a doctor!
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This is the follow up evaluation of the young fisherman with conjunctivitis which showed a marked improvement from 3 days prior!
He was very happy to learn that he could return to earning a living for he and his family!
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This is a young girl that I had seen earlier and treated for a middle ear infection. This is a followup visit and she is doing well and is happy that there is no more pain in her ear!
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This is a picture of the young fisherman and his wife standing beside their home!
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Now I would like to, once again, take you on a little tour of our little island in an effort to give you a glimpse of what it is like to live on a small, remote island and live a subsistence life style! It is a very poor but beautiful island filled with some of the most friendly, happy, hardworking, ingenious people that you will ever meet! I hope that you will enjoy the tour!
Please, as always, take a moment to leave your thought and comments as they are encouraged and welcomed! I would encourage you to become followers of this blog, you can do so synonymously, that way you will automatically receive an email notification whenever there is a new post! I am going to try to add a new widget to the blog before my next post that will allow you to enter you email information (it will never be used for any other purpose) and also automatically be notified via email whenever there is a new post! Please consider telling (or emailing) your friends, family and coworkers about our medical mission and this blog!
These three pictures were all taken on one afternoon as we were going for a little ride on our motorcycle!
For most of us it is very hard to imagine any of these as your MAIN modes of transportation, yet for these people that is the case and they are very happy!
This is an example of what I would describe as a some what better than average house for most of the population here on Pilar. It has a tin roof, electricity, a TV and some of the walls are made of plywood!
These are some fishing nets that have been cleaned and partially dried before being bundled up and hung on the tree to finish drying and await the fisherman who will soon cast them out upon the ocean to make a humble living for themselves and their families!
This is a woman we met along side of the road on our way back home. She was "pasturing her goats which are a very good source of food here on Pilar, especially if you are blessed enough to acquire a male and a female, because then you can breed them and have a small income and have meat to feed your family.
If you look behind her you can see a small field of native corn growing. We are just now recovering from a year long drought that caused much of the seed corn from last year's crop to become depleted trying to plant and grow corn during a drought with no irrigation!
These are strips from the Romblon Leaves that have been harvested and split into strips and are drying in the sun.
When they have dried sufficiently they will be hand woven into sleeping mats for the family and the excess will be sold at the market to provide money for rice so that they can eat!
This is a Romblon plant or tree from which the leaves are harvested, split and the dried before they are hand woven into sleeping mats and other items that the family will use. Any extra items will be sold at the market and the money will be used to by rice and other staples!
This is a Breadfruit. It is a staple food item for the people of Pilar. To give you an idea of the size, each full sized leave is between 18 and 24 inches long!
This picture is of one of the streets of the town of Pilar. You can see the various stacks of wood that are placed there to dry in front of the homes along the street. Once the wood has been dried sufficiently it will be used to cook the food for the families that live there.
It seems just a little more time consuming that turning on your stove, don' you think!
This is just one of a great variety of flowering plants that grow wild all over our island! This one is often found growing near a group of banana trees which also grow all over the island and are used for food and sold in the market place!
This flower is very pretty and is often used by the girls and young women to decorate their hair for special occasions!
We hope that you have enjoyed our blog post and the mini tour of our island!
We will close for now with the good news that Peacemakers International has made a very generous donation for our medical mission and it will allow us to purchase some much needed medical equipment and provide a resource to pay for critical hospitalizations! Our church back in the US, Hilltop Community Church, has been able to receive donations and forward them along to us as well as provide us with a monthly allowance in an effort to allow us to continue with our medical mission! Hilltop has also blessed us with the collection of 2 boxes of medical supplies and has just recently shipped them to us. We should receive them in about 6 weeks.
Recently someone ask me why we are here. I said to provide medical care to those who are in need and can not afford to pay for it, and to encourage them in their faithfulness to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! I though surely there are many verses in the bible that could provide a better answer! The parable about the good Samaritan, the widow's two copper coins and son on. I would close this post with a much better answer that the Lord has provided: Psalm 82:3-4. "Vindicate the weak and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; Deliver them out of the hands of the wicked." Yes I hope someone else asks me why we are here, that is what I will tell them!
May God bless us, everyone!
Until Next Time
Chip & Rhome Nuttall
Christian Medical Missionaries
Pilar Camotes, Cebu, Philippines
Praise God for the help you've been able to extend to so many in our Lord's name, especially the children.
ReplyDeleteLynn tells me you've recommended mosquito nets & geranium seeds to prevent dengue. Any other measures that your readers can help with?
Of course, we will pray for you and your patients, that they may see the hand of the Great Physician in your work.