Yates Family In Soddo

A few weeks ago, I attended a conference in Tanzania called Every Breathe Counts. It was me, two of my colleagues from Soddo Christian Hospital and a general practitioner from St Mary's Catholic Primary Hospital.  One of the most interesting parts of the conference was looking at the data from the "Global Burden of Disease" as published by Lancet. This is what I have seen, but didn't have numbers to describe it. Out of all the deaths per year documented in Ethiopia, the LARGEST box, which indicated the largest number of deaths per year, is from neonatal causes.  This is what motivates us each year to keep getting better, keep learning, keep improving, keep teaching, keep expanding.   This conference was amazing! It was 200 neonatal medical providers from 9 countries in Africa. It was a dream come true. This walk of caring for tiny babies, that some believe have no hope for life, is sacred and precious. The deep sorrows and the high joys of this journey taking care ...

Last December, the medical director from a local primary hospital, St Mary's Dubbo Catholic Primary Hospital, contacted us about helping them start a newborn unit at their hospital.  We were honored to be able to help them. In their hospital they have up to 10 deliveries a day, and didn't have a dedicated newborn unit/NICU. They also only have general practitioners at their hospital. There is no family medicine physician, pediatrician or obstetrician at their hospital. Their medical director coordinated with us to send on of their general practitioner doctors, who was only a few months out of medical school, and three nurses. After being trained at SCH they would be tasked to run the newborn unit in their hospital. We have been able to help with their training, donate some supplies, and bring their GP for further training to an excellent NICU conference in Tanzania.  They launched their new department earlier this year. It has been such an encouragement to see the work of our ...

Last week we started on the foundation of the New Hope Women's and Children's Center. This was a really special day to celebrate all God has done in our women's and children's center and the celebrate all God will continue to do.    It reminded me of the song: God of Revival by Bryan Johnson  'Cause there's no prison wall You can't break through, no Mountain You can't move, all things are possible There's no broken body you can't raise, no Soul that You can't save, all things are possible   The darkest night, You can light it up You can light it up, oh God of revival LET HOPE ARISE , death is overcome You've already won, oh God of revival God of revival   On that day, I was standing there on this empty property and saw these beautiful Meskel flowers, which means flowers of the cross. I picked them up, root and all. Lord willing, I will return them when the new building is complete. Til then, they will have a home in my backyard waiting, h...

  Last year, we completed screening all 11,000 students ages 8-18 years old in Soddo town. This in itself is quite an accomplishment. Our team is very proficient at screening for early signs of rheumatic heart disease. The team is comfortable with the process caring for those students in Soddo, but now we are increasing our distance from Soddo. The area right outside of the city is called Soddo Zuria, it is essentially the ring of communities around Soddo. Getting started has been a challenge. We had to get additional letters of support from the zonal ministry of health and the school board. Getting permission from each of the schools has been hard work for my team, but I am so thankful to have such capable and dedicated staff. The school year just started a month ago and we have had four outreach events, one per week for the entire day. When the team comes back, they are tired and have been screening up to 270 students in one day using bedside echocardiography! That is over 1000 p...

4 years ago we suffered a very difficult and very real infectious outbreak in our NICU that resulted in many neonatal deaths. It was a very difficult time. One of the moments that sticks in my mind was when we had preterm triplets born in our hospital (it was our last viable set of triplets). It was a small space and we didn't have any room for these babies, but we did the best we could at the time and put these babies in our acute care NICU, all three in 1 bed in the middle of our small room surrounded by 3 other babies on the outside. Unfortunately, due to hospital acquired infection, which is difficult to control in a very tight space, two of the three triplets died. I can still remember when the family brought back the one on this babies birthday thanking me for saving their child. Fast forward to this week, our OB department has many babies ready for delivery, 18 to be exact with SIX sets of twins, and TWO sets of triplets. Twins and Triplets are often born prematu...

 A sweet friend and co-worker of mine, Dr Dereje, was pregnant with his first child. He and his wife had prayed and prayed for this child and offered him and his life to the Lord. In honor of this, they decided to call him Samuel, God has heard, even before the delivery.  As his wife approached her due date, she was induced for low amniotic fluid. I remember the day so well. It was one of those days, I don't think I will ever forget. His wife was rushed to the OR for a cesarean section because the baby's heart rate dropped. I ran to the OR to meet the OB team there.  At delivery, we saw that Samuel had stooled in the amniotic fluid and at the time of delivery, aspirated some of it into his lungs. This is called meconium aspiration. This started a very difficult and complicated recovery. We placed a tube down his throat and he was placed on a breathing machine. Multiple times he nearly died with a very very low heart rate and a nearly obstructed breathing tube. He required...

Now over a year ago, Soddo Christian Hospital started a sustainable prevention program for rheumatic heart disease. It involves school based ultrasound screening for early detection of rheumatic heart disease. A group of 6, that grew to 8 nurses were trained on how to do the screening ultrasound. They are now proficient to go on their own to do the screening. After the children are screened, one of our Ethiopian specialists confirms the changes in the heart valves and the child gets started on monthly penicillin injections. The injections prevent further strep throat, which then prevents the scaring on the heart valves.  This chronic cardiac problem not only causes a short life for the child, but often the families pay a lot of money for medications, travel far to doctor’s appointments, other children may not get what they need and it can cause a medical I can’t count the number of tears that I have cried over sick children destined to die of rheumatic heart disease before their ...