The team visited the one children’s hospital in Ndola. It had a fresh coat of lemon paint on the walls which was only a surface coating on a pretty heart wrenching place. It is sad seeing sick children in hospitals in Australia but at least there is medicine available and a reasonable amount of staff. And many of the illnesses in Australia are not easily preventable.
Ndola hospital has wards that are typically 2.5 metres by 3 metres. It will have 6 beds in it with six chairs for a relative to sit by each bed and then a number of patients in the narrow corridors. Many of these children have been in hospital for one to three weeks. There was a little boy sitting quietly with his mother, his arm dangling from under his jumper – obviously broken – waiting outside the treatment room, lots of kids suffering from malaria, malnutrition, broken bones and on it went. I think the most heart wrenching for the team was an eleven year old girl. Both her parents were dead and the grandmother could no longer stay at the hospital, so she was all alone in the intensive care ward in a lot of pain waiting to die. She had been having seizures which they thought were caused by epilepsy so nothing was done. It turned out she has tetanus easily prevented by a cheap vaccine. Susan Chalkais went back to visit her with the Fanta and chocolate she had asked for. The girl had been asking after Susan all day and was so pleased to see her.
Our little part in the visit was to give the children soft toys tooth brushes and tooth paste and to pray for them and take an interest in their lives.
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