ground in the open air.
The hospital is a collection of disconnected rooms. As you enter, from the hot hospital road, you walk along a corridor that is filled with patients fanning themselves with registration cards, waiting to be seen. Off to the side, to the right of the corridor, is the nursing room, a small room with a drug cabinet, a single patient bed, and a crowded desk full of patient charts and open bottles of pills. Past this is the small, dark emergency room.
There are a half-dozen other patient suites. Most of the patients seem to pay no attention to our hospital structure. Their order of preference appears to be: veranda, hallway, courtyard, and, lastly, hospital ward. The rooms are hot, stagnant places. Little air gets through them and the light is poor. Contrast this with the veranda, which yesterday was packed with family members, breeze blowing through, people laughing like they were on the deck of a cruise ship.
I remember, as a medical student, working in the emergency room for the first time, trying to make sense of what it contained. It seemed so large, so complicated; it was not a world, it was a separate universe. With time, it shrank. This place will too. Right now, its rooms and hallways form a maze full of people I cannot talk to, nor properly help.
Yesterday, as we turned towards the back of the hospital, towards the two rooms reserved for patients with contagious tuberculosis, Sandrine pointed out a broken section of the skirting cement wall. An orange plastic barrier had been put into the gap. She explained that when MSF started working here, about nine months ago, government soldiers were living in the hospital. They had removed part of the fence that their military compound shared with the hospital and, with that, claimed Abyei’s most valuable resource as their own.
One of the first things MSF did was declare that our presence in the hospital was conditional on their armed absence. We put up the orange plastic barrier, and it has stood since. The hospital was returned to Abyei. I thought that of all the good MSF might do here over the years, that would be the single greatest act.
Sandrine pointed at a humming generator in the corner.
“This gives us power for some of the day. It’s mainly used to cool the drugs in the storage room and the vaccine fridge. If you need it at other hours, for the oxygen concentrator or whatever, ask the guard to turn it on.”
We passed a group of patients gathered around barrels set on a high wall.
“There is no running water. Each day the UN trucks it in for us and we pump it into these blue barrels here. The orange ones are for washing hands. Lots of chlorine.”
A room near the front held two small refrigerators and a shelf lined with reagents. A tall man in a lab coat was peering through a microscope.
“Okay, here’s the lab. Hi, Ismael.” Ismael lifted his head, raised his hand. “Ismael is great, but there is only so much he can do with the tools. He can test for malaria, meningitis, TB, hepatitis, HIV …um … blood groups too. Oh, and urine and stool. I think that’s it. No electrolytes, no blood counts.”
“Cultures? Blood, stool, sputum?”
“No.”
We turned the corner and stopped at a patient’s bed. The boy on it looked like bones glued to bones. Sandrine told me he had measles last month and showed up on the hospital’s door several days after. She handed me his chart. His fever hadn’t broken for four days. He glanced up at me as she told me his story, then looked back at the wall.
“Where are his parents?” I asked.
“Haven’t seen them,” she said. “He came alone.”
She pointed to her right. “Almost forgot. In that room, the one that looks like a storage closet, is Mansood. He came in with a cellulitis, around his knee, about a month ago. He hasn’t been able to walk since. Mohamed will tell you more. He should know pretty much everyone too.”
Next were the patients with measles. There were two of them,
The hospital is a collection of disconnected rooms. As you enter, from the hot hospital road, you walk along a corridor that is filled with patients fanning themselves with registration cards, waiting to be seen. Off to the side, to the right of the corridor, is the nursing room, a small room with a drug cabinet, a single patient bed, and a crowded desk full of patient charts and open bottles of pills. Past this is the small, dark emergency room.
There are a half-dozen other patient suites. Most of the patients seem to pay no attention to our hospital structure. Their order of preference appears to be: veranda, hallway, courtyard, and, lastly, hospital ward. The rooms are hot, stagnant places. Little air gets through them and the light is poor. Contrast this with the veranda, which yesterday was packed with family members, breeze blowing through, people laughing like they were on the deck of a cruise ship.
I remember, as a medical student, working in the emergency room for the first time, trying to make sense of what it contained. It seemed so large, so complicated; it was not a world, it was a separate universe. With time, it shrank. This place will too. Right now, its rooms and hallways form a maze full of people I cannot talk to, nor properly help.
Yesterday, as we turned towards the back of the hospital, towards the two rooms reserved for patients with contagious tuberculosis, Sandrine pointed out a broken section of the skirting cement wall. An orange plastic barrier had been put into the gap. She explained that when MSF started working here, about nine months ago, government soldiers were living in the hospital. They had removed part of the fence that their military compound shared with the hospital and, with that, claimed Abyei’s most valuable resource as their own.
One of the first things MSF did was declare that our presence in the hospital was conditional on their armed absence. We put up the orange plastic barrier, and it has stood since. The hospital was returned to Abyei. I thought that of all the good MSF might do here over the years, that would be the single greatest act.
Sandrine pointed at a humming generator in the corner.
“This gives us power for some of the day. It’s mainly used to cool the drugs in the storage room and the vaccine fridge. If you need it at other hours, for the oxygen concentrator or whatever, ask the guard to turn it on.”
We passed a group of patients gathered around barrels set on a high wall.
“There is no running water. Each day the UN trucks it in for us and we pump it into these blue barrels here. The orange ones are for washing hands. Lots of chlorine.”
A room near the front held two small refrigerators and a shelf lined with reagents. A tall man in a lab coat was peering through a microscope.
“Okay, here’s the lab. Hi, Ismael.” Ismael lifted his head, raised his hand. “Ismael is great, but there is only so much he can do with the tools. He can test for malaria, meningitis, TB, hepatitis, HIV …um … blood groups too. Oh, and urine and stool. I think that’s it. No electrolytes, no blood counts.”
“Cultures? Blood, stool, sputum?”
“No.”
We turned the corner and stopped at a patient’s bed. The boy on it looked like bones glued to bones. Sandrine told me he had measles last month and showed up on the hospital’s door several days after. She handed me his chart. His fever hadn’t broken for four days. He glanced up at me as she told me his story, then looked back at the wall.
“Where are his parents?” I asked.
“Haven’t seen them,” she said. “He came alone.”
She pointed to her right. “Almost forgot. In that room, the one that looks like a storage closet, is Mansood. He came in with a cellulitis, around his knee, about a month ago. He hasn’t been able to walk since. Mohamed will tell you more. He should know pretty much everyone too.”
Next were the patients with measles. There were two of them,
Similar Books
