Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Red Cross Flight
-N
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
St. Lucia + Hluhluwe-Umfolozi
The Wards and the Brain Drain
Friday, January 20, 2012
A Middle Income Country
Swazi Archdeacon in Ireland
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Filling in the gaps
For example, when a patient is decided to be admitted by the intern in the admissions room, they will often sit in the waiting area for 1-4 days before a bed becomes available for them in the wards. During this time, it is rare if they are seen again by another physician, let alone started on the appropriate medications or interventions. During this time, it is not uncommon for patients to die. What we have found to be the most helpful is to round on patients throughout the hospital who otherwise wouldn't be seen by an attending or intern. We have had minor successes... starting IVF on a man who initially presented with altered mental who has become so dehydrated due to lack of access to fluids that he was hypernatremic to 167(!), ordering blood and a PPI for a patient whose down-trending Hgb was left unnoticed by the scurrying interns and nurses around him, and repleting the potassium of 1.2 in a HIV+ male with cyclical vomiting and diarrhea....though all minor interventions, they are ones that hopefully prevented their demise.
One of the sadder cases we have seen this week, in which our interventions were too late pertained to a previously young and healthy man without HIV who presented with altered mental status. He underwent a lumbar puncture and results returned with +India ink stain suggestive of cryptococcal meningitis. He was treated empirically for crytococcal and bacterial meningitis for 3 hospital days. His mental status had worsened to a near comatose status, but despite lack of inprovement on antibiotics, his treatment plan did not change due to lack of physician follow-up over the weekend. (Here, only pre-determined "sick" patients are seen on the weekends.) By the time Nicole and I met the patient, we were extremely suspicious of this diagnosis as his CD4 count was in the 1000's and his negative HIV status was confirmed. Furthermore, his CSF cytology was fairly bland other than the India ink stain. We repeated the lumbar puncture which returned with no crytococcal organisms seen, and it was felt that his prior results were likely due to lab technician error. We ordered a head CT which took 3 days to obtain. It demonstrated a subdural bleed with overlying abscess. 1 hour after the correct diagnosis was made and while attempting to get a hold of the neurosurgeons, the patient expired with the family at the bedside.
-f
Drakensburg
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What's wrong with this picture?
Monday, January 16, 2012
Edendale
First the facts: we're working at Edendale Hospital, which is a 900 bed facility that caters to the surrounding regional community of about 1 million.... everything from trauma to medicine to ARV clinic. It was traditionally the "black hospital" pre-end of apartheid era, and so the facilities are not as robust as the nearby Grey's Hospital (the "white hospital"). If a patient needs an MRI or echocardiogram, they have to be transferred to Grey's for the study, usually weeks to months later (assuming they are still alive). 90% of the patients we see have HIV/AIDS, many of who are also co-infected with tuberculosis, and sometimes MDR-Tb (multi-drug resistant Tb) and XDR (extensively-drug resistance Tb). Tuberculosis and HIV are so common here that patients are assumed to have HIV or a complication of HIV until proven otherwise and N95 masks are required at all times. Even the hospital elevator is commonly referred to as the “XDR express.”
As expected, we've spent a good part of the week both frustrated and saddened - while we've encountered loads of wonderful, hardworking doctors who genuinely care, lack of resources is profound. 3 ICU beds. Only the recent introduction of a statin on formulary. Bloodwork that returns the next day...or never. Missing paperwork and incomplete histories. However, I think what we have been most struck by, is that the lack of resources also includes people. There simply aren’t enough of those hardworking doctors to go around, and so only some patients get seen by an attending each day. There are no handoffs and continuity of care is rare. And when someone dies overnight, it's difficult to find out why, because no one seems to know. We came in today to find that the majority of patients hadn't had their temperature taken over the weekend (I'm still not sure if it was because there weren't enough nurses or because the thermometer was broken).
Needless to say, we've already seen many deaths.... the 17 year old with HIV related cardiomyopathy who needs a milrinone drip but gets morphine, the 22 year-old with altered mental status and not so normal CT Brain who dies before the neurologist sees her the following day, the 55 year old with sepsis and DKA. Le sigh. Despite all this, we've also been struck by the incredible amount of dedication from the attendings here, who choose to work at Edendale everyday to manage the best they can with the resources given. More on this in the next posting...
-NSunday, January 8, 2012
Initiation
Six years after our trip to Uganda, we have finally made it back to the African continent. For the next 4 weeks, we will be calling South Africa our home. With our brief 3 day stay so far, we have discovered that some things never change. Nicole still has an extremely small bladder and I can still fall asleep pretty much anywhere. But unlike our experiences in Uganda, we are no longer navigating rolling blackouts, spotty plumbing, and camps filled with mud huts where everyone lives in absolute poverty -- now, we are dealing with a developing country for which the poor live in the same communities and in stark contrast from the wealthy. Probably because of this, South Africa has one of the highest crimes rates in the world and our first day here, we were imparted some helpful safety tips like “when you drive, leave some space between you and the car in front of you incase you need to make a quick getaway from an ambush” and “always leave your windows open a crack so that if someone tries to smash your window to steal something, there is less tension and less chance the window will break.”
So far, we have ventured into Durban along South Africa’s eastern coast (see pics) and haven’t run into any problems or uncomfortable situations. (Truth be told, as of right now, we have been more worried about our safety driving on the left side of the road than walking on the streets!) There, we relaxed on the beach, swam in the Indian Ocean, and had some delicious South African/Indian fusion while we re-cooperated from our jet-lag and prepared for what will be our first day of work tomorrow at Edendale Hospital in the province of Kwuzulu-Natal. We anticipate many challenges (as our mentor here says, “expect more deaths in your short time at Edendale than you have encountered in all of your residency thus far, and more than that, expect them to have been preventable deaths at that”), but we are excited to begin working. So stay tuned….
http://www.facebook.com/pages/iTEACH-SA/98675643113
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAmM55TRW2I&feature=youtu.be
http://www.rainerfellows.org/?q=Fellows/Krista-Dong-and-Zinny-Thabethehttp://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/health/iteach-taking-on-tb-and-hiv-in-south-africa.html
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Monday, January 2, 2012
Kewarganegaraan Bayi yang Lahir di Finlandia
Perpanjangan Greencard dan sworn affidafit untuk penduduk USA
KEWARGANEGARAAN RI untuk Anak
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Syarat Pembuatan Paspor RI untuk anak di perwakilan RI
- Kartu Identitas (Card de Légitimation/ Auslander Ausweis/ Permit Swiss)
- Surat Bukti Domisili (Control d’habitant / Anwohnerkontrolle).
- Surat Keterangan (Letter of Attestation), yang berisi keterangan domisili dari sekolah (bagi pelajar yang tinggal di asrama/dormitory)