THE HARVEST
IS PLENTYFULL, BUT THE WORKERS ARE FEW. ASK THE LORD OF THE HARVEST, THEREFORE;
TO SEND OUT WORKERS INTO HIS HARVEST FIELD. Luke 10.2
Friends of Ndolage Friends Letter 2005
Ndolage Hospital P.O.Box
34
Kamachumu Kagera-Region
Tanzania
Dear Friends of Ndolage! 10.12.2005
At the
beginning of October a hospital team went on a visit to a remote village some
30km from Ndolage. They went to check on
the progress of a seven year old child who had been admitted to Ndolage the
month before. Let us call this child
Jonas. He had presented to the hospital
with paralysis of both legs and had been investigated for polio and other
causes of paralysis without finding a cause.
On the follow up visit it was obvious his condition had deteriorated and
he was readmitted to Ndolage for further investigation.
At this
time Jonas had developed additional problems including swelling of his face
which pointed the doctors towards a diagnosis of Burkitt’s Lymphoma. Burkitt’s Lymphoma is a very fast growing
malignant cancer that particularly affects children in malarious areas of
Africa. Without treatment the cancer is
rapidly fatal but it is one of the cancers which responds well to chemotherapy. The combination of chemotherapy drugs needed
to treat the lymphoma are not available in Kagera and neither were there any
staff trained to give the drugs. His
only option therefore was to go to Dar-es-Salaam where there is a specialist
government hospital for cancer.
Treatment at the cancer hospital is free but to get there involves a
journey covering a third of the width of Africa, a journey which his family
could not afford. Thanks however to the
generosity of our friends who donated to our poor patient fund the cost of a
flight for the child, his father and a nurse could be. Jonas is undergoing treatment at the present
time.
Another way
the Hospital reaches out to the community surrounding it is through the
services of the RCH (Reproductive Child Health) clinic providing amongst other
things antenatal services for pregnant mothers.
A key partner in this service is Witness Richards. Witness is a nurse trained (through money
donated from Germany) to counsel pregnant women about the benefits of testing
for HIV in pregnancy to prevent transmission of the virus to their child. Witness has had great success in creating a
service where women feel comfortable and respected and the majority of pregnant
women are now accepting testing and if found to be positive the further
services which can be offered to them.
These further services include giving Nevirapine (an antiviral drug) to
the mother at the time of delivery and to the infant once born to substantially
reduce the risk of HIV transmission. In addition all women if found to be positive
can be registered with the hospital AIDS Control Program, entitling them (and
their family) to free medical treatment.
The male partners of pregnant women are also actively encouraged to
attend for counselling and testing.
The next
step for the hospital was to plan to give HIV positive patients access to
Antiretroviral drugs- drugs which suppress the action of the HIV virus in the
body and enable individuals to stay healthy for many years. This is particularly important for pregnant
women as without treatment for themselves and their partners a few years down
the line their children become orphans, a huge problem here in Kagera. Ndolage Hospital therefore planned a program
to introduce Antiretroviral drugs and gained the support of the United Evangelical
Mission (comprising many churches in Germany and individual private
donors). UEM agreed to pay for a project
coordinator (Witness) and for the antiretroviral treatment of an agreed number
of patients (the treatment being comparatively very expensive and lifelong).
These
initial plans however had to be substantially changed when the Tanzanian
Government introduced their own Antiretroviral program last year. Through the government program antiretroviral
drugs are provided free through clinics called “care and treatment centres”
(CTC). These care and treatment centres
are being established across the country starting in the major referral
hospitals but gradually spreading to regional and district hospitals. Unfortunately Ndolage was not initially included
in the initial allocation of centres as despite being widely acknowledged
locally as a referral centre it is not
the government designated district hospital for the area. Witness and a small team of interested
people therefore set about lobbying to get Ndolage included in the program as
Ndolage had also been told it could not start services independently as the
government wanted to control the distribution of drugs to prevent resistance
problems.
To become a
CTC centre the government established comprehensive guidelines about what
facilities and staff should be available at the hospital. Based on this Witness
and her team set about ensuring the hospital fulfilled these criteria through
training of staff, purchasing of equipment and the planning of a new CTC
building. At the beginning of November
the Hospital received the long awaited news that it had been included in the
government program for this year, and it is expected that antiretroviral drugs
will become available to patients through the government in January of next
year.
We would
like at this point to express our sincere thanks to UEM for their continuing
support and flexibility through what has been a challenging and constantly
changing 1-2 years. Through our close
relationship with Wuppertal we have been able to adapt the initial project
plans to fit in with those developed by the government and it is expected that
the required CTC centre building to be funded by UEM will be built early next
year.
Additional
news:
Regina, a
nurse from theatre has returned safely from a 3 month internship in Germany and
is sharing her new experiences with us. At the end of last year 3 doctors
completed their university education and have arrived to work with us. One of
them already became competent to perform difficult operations like
prostatectomies. We currently have 4 voluntary doctors, a 79 years old surgeon
from Sweden 3 VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) doctors from the UK working
with us in the fields of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics and Public
Health enabling us to further improve services and exchange skills.
We wish to
you a blessed time of advent and Christmas!
Dr. James Kato, Dr. in Charge Dr. Frank Beier, Surgeon
Bank account for
donations:
Vereinte Ev.
Mission, Evangelische Darlehngenossenschaft Münster, BLZ 400 601 04, Konto-Nr.:
563 701, Purpose: Code Ndolage-NWD and complete adress for the donation
certificate. (For better planning a standing order is very helpfull)
Contact:
Hospital: ndolage@bukobaonline.com
Dr. Frank Beier: SilkeFrankB@web.de
Informations about United Evangelical Mission: www.vemission.org