Bansang Hospital

This morning I came out of my room to see the early morning sun across the river, which was already burning hot by 8.30am.

We got into the car and went to collect the breakfast that we had organised the night before… only to find that the guy had failed to get the order ready for us. So we headed to Bansang hospital empty handed, and arranged for Ba Sarjo to collect breakfast for the group as soon as it was ready.

Bansang Hospital

Note the vulture sitting on the roof of the women’s ward!

Today’s session was quite different – we had less people and it was in the Principal Nursing Officer’ office, rather than a big room. We were there to see Asha, who is a nutritionist at the hospital, working within the paediatric unit.  We weren’t able to have service users at the meeting, but the doctors and nurses who work with Asha all came and were very engaged throughout the day. We paused only for breakfast when it arrived – more spam, spaghetti and tapalapa!

Like yesterday, it was great to hear about all the work that the hospital are doing, and hear the success stories of the feeding programmes and the outreach work with local communities. Most childhood malnutrition is due to lack of knowledge about food and hygiene rather than food shortages, so they are doing a lot of work to educate parents about the best food to give to their children, and how to ensure good hygiene to prevent illness which might lead to malnutrition. They are also running food demonstrations in local markets to give practical experience to mothers who may not know what to cook for their infants.

As well as working with parents and communities, Asha has been sharing skills with hospital staff, training staff within the hospital about basic nutrition and how to tell the difference between malnutrition and dehydration – and then how to treat patients accordingly. As a result, child mortality rates of those admitted to the unit have dropped to less than 5% - which, going by World Health Organisation guidance, is a good result.

After the meeting finished Asha gave us a tour of the hospital and the children’s ward, including the malnutrition unit where she is based. After a rush of children following the rainy season it was fairly quiet, with only 4 infants and their carers – three very small babies and one boy who could have been about 5 or so.

This little one was happily eating an egg, but you can see his distended stomach typical of malnourished children, and he had such huge eyes in his tiny head. The other two babies were so small they looked like frail little birds. But their prognosis was good, and the unit is really making a difference to the health of children in the area.