Lessons Learned

Dear friends,
It has been a couple days since I last posted, and man, so much has happened! Our health camp in the village took place on Friday without a major snag, thank God. We arrived after the harrowing journey through the roads and byways of northern Bangladesh, and began the process of setting up the health camp. We only had two doctors, so we did our best to have all the personal and basic health information filled out before we put the children in the exam room. I was the only non-doctor who knew about vital signs, so I found myself taking about 100 pulse rates while my intrepid American friend Leah (now Dr. Leah to the villagers) took respiratory rates. The whole experience was exciting, but the temperature was excruciatingly hot and humid so that large beads of sweat formed on your arms and dripped down your face. The fact that dozens of children and parents were crowding around you made for a further increase in the temperature.
The results of the health survey were astounding. Of 95 children surveyed, over one third of all children(both sick and healthy) demonstrated clinical signs of malnutrition. 18% of children suffered from gastrointestinal disease, while another 22% had upper respiratory infections. One child had a preliminary case of pneumonia, while another had a possible case of TB.
The worst thing I saw that day was a tiny child, maybe 4 years old, who had a huge abscess in her groin region. For the sake of the non-medicos among us, I will not go into details, but needless to say it was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. On her tiny legs were multiple scars of previous abscesses. This child needed to go to a hospital urgently to prevent systemic infection and possible death, but her caretaker refused, saying that she had had them before and had been fine.
This is the hard reality of charitable work. Sometimes you are completely inspired by the contribution your are able to make, and you feel on top of the world. At other times, like this one, you feel utterly frustrated, angry, and helpless to do anything. The key is to pick your battles, win the ones you can, and move on, never forgetting to learn from your mistakes.