The greatest love of all

After two days chaos in the hospital, we could take a break today. Last evening, after we returned to compound for a while, a vehicle from another NGO came. Two of their staff told us that they had brought a mother to our hospital. They could not find any doctor in the hospital so they directly came to us. The same story repeated again. This woman lives in a village far away from the hospital. She had delivered a baby two days ago and had another twin retained. The family had to take her for a long distance to their clinic. The baby was dead but could not be delivered because the arm and head were caught. The team immediately returned to hospital. We found her in painful contraction and in great stress. It's her fifth pregnancy. We worried that she might have ruptured the uterus. We sent her to theatre after resuscitation. She was in agony pain and difficult to cooperate. We finally put her under spinal anaesthesia. I was the surgeon and Philip assisted me. Same story, we found the uterus with silent rupture at the lower segment. I delivered the dead baby and repaired the uterus. This woman did remarkably well this morning. She could sit up and breast fed her live first twin. It is another beautiful picture of LOVE. We are so glad that she could manage to go to the NGO, later sent to us. If there was another half or an hour delay, I am sure that she might end up in massive bleeding or death. All because of these women's striving ability and strong will power make them surviving in all these sufferings.   Most of these women may not have their antenatal check up. They do not know the condition of baby, number of foetus, mode of presentation and chance of delivery. Most of them deliver at home. If they are lucky, mother and baby are alright. If not, they may end up with obstructed labour, baby death, complications of vaginal tear and fistula, rupture of uterus, or even maternal death. That's the reason why Philip suggests MSF should target at reducing the maternal mortality death rate by reorganising the antenatal care in the hospital and extending the catchments area through outreach programme. These may help picking up these high risk pregnancies and referring them to the hospital. In last one week, I learnt a lot from him. He had organised collaboration with the hospital Antenatal Clinic. They have two experienced clinic assistants working with a NGO before. We have seen quite a number of pregnant women referred by them. We could identify some mother with high risk pregnancies. We advise them to come to the hospital early in labour. We need to stress that MSF service was free. While we were carrying the woman back to the ward after operation, we asked her husband to help us. As the ward space was narrow, we asked the husband to climb on the bed to transfer her across. But he could not understand us. He climbed up and lay on the bed. It made all of us laugh, which helped release the tension in this high stress condition. He said sorry to us. He may not know what is the hospital functioning. These people are so innocent and lovely. I am glad my little effort might help them.  And I am glad I can join this mission and meet Philip. I learn a lot of maternity care and working experience in these deprived conditions. All these may help in my future mission if I have any.      After returned from the ward, I found Stephane doing all the cleaning in OT. We had to. If not, another emergency operation coming at night would make all of us in a mess. I picked up the water bucket and helped him. At first, he did not allow me helping him. He said it was not the surgeon’s job. Of course, I would not listen. How could I leave a 65 years old man behind cleaning the OT after our messy operation? Au Yiu Kai