One Among Many

As I've written before, I spent a day while in Rutshuru (where Medecins Sans Frontieres shares the administration of an excellent hospital with the Ministry of Health) riding with Didier Kaubi, a Congolese nurse who has been working for MSF for three years.

Our first call-out (pictured above is the ambulance leaving the MSF residential compound – the service starts at 0800 and that's when the call came in) took us to a small health clinic in the tiny village of Kinyandoni, where we found a mother and her badly burned 18-month-old son Elie. Elie had fallen into the cooking fire, which in huts with only a few square meters of floor space, is easy to do.

Didier spoke with Elie's 24-year-old mother Antoinette, who has three other children at home, and put a line into Elie's arm to administer a pain killer and Ringer's lactate solution, which comprises sodium, chloride, potassium and lactate and is used to rehydrate children who have suffered burns or blood loss.

Then we all piled back into the vehicles and drove Elie the 10 kilometers to the hospital, where Didier handed him off to the doctor in charge of the pediatric unit. [I've included a shot of the Lund-Browder chart for estimating the extent of burns in children, allowing for the varying proportion of body surface in those of different ages.]

Elie was a brave little soldier, and I hope he's recovering okay.