Isambe

Isambe is one of the malnourished children. He has Kwashiorkor, which leaves the children very small but swollen with ulcers all over their bodies rather than looking like a skeleton. He had been doing fairly well and gaining weight. Then over a period of four days, he became lethargic and started losing weight despite continued ng feeding. This happened over the weekend while I was gone. The notes in the chart said “consider treating for TB if survives” and provided no other treatment. So yesterday, I took over his care when he was unresponsive. He went downhill so quickly, I thought I might be able to reverse it. He was already on the best antibiotic we have: Ceftriaxone. All day I worked on him…I started him on fluids (difficult to do here…can’t be through IV, only thru ng tube) and ordered a lot of labs and tests. Half the tests didn’t get done because people went home early. I still had no clue what was wrong with him by the end of the day… I came to work early this morning to see if he survived and to talk to the night nurse.
Isambe died in the night. The nurse said he pulled the ng tube and then couldn’t get another one in. So that meant we couldn’t give him any more medications or fluids. I didn’t even want to ask why they would pull the ng tube.
The reason I fought so hard for Isambe was that his mother told me that her only other son had already died earlier this year.

The pictures are of other malnourished babies and their moms. Two are blind: one from Vitamin A deficiency and one from tribal medicine.