The Road to Gimbie Letters

10/13/01

Dear Family and Friends,

We have had lots of e-mail problem again from Ethiopia and it does not seem to be fixed yet, so it is very difficult to bulk mail things, such as the Road to Gimbie.

I had talked before about a trip that we had to Addis. In this mailing, I have included a couple more pictures. One of them shows that fog I talked about last time, and the other is a picture from the main street in Gimbie.

We have a couple of visiting doctors here from Europe. Both of them have just finished their masters in Tropical Medicine. They are getting plenty of introduction to Tropical Medicine and other kinds.

We have had two cases of cerebral malaria this last week. One of them was a woman who was eight months pregnant. She came in confused and having a fever. She was checked for malaria and discovered to have quite a strong infection. We put her on quinine, but one of the side effects of the drug is that it can cause preterm labor. At the time she came to the hospital, we could not hear any baby heartbeat and, sadly, once putting her on the quinine, she delivered a dead baby within a day. Unfortunately, she got worse in the first day and she became comatose. We were really praying for her in our daily nursing staff worships. She then started to get better, and after three days, she was looking better, able to sit up. Suddenly, she had a downhill course again and we discovered that she was septic with some unknown infection. We put her on antibiotics and had another round of prayer and now today she is sitting up, talking and doing well. She is going home tomorrow. Cerebral malaria is very bad, malaria in pregnancy is worse, and then if you add in sepsis, it is very serious, but she is going home tomorrow. What an answer to prayer.

Our other cerebral malaria patient is also in the hospital right now. He is an old man and that is another group that often dies of malaria. This morning we were doing rounds on him and he was unresponsive. That is very bad for a seventy-year-old man. We checked his blood sugar and it was very low, only about a fifth of normal. This low blood sugar is a complication of both the cerebral malaria and the quinine. We had him on IV sugar, but his blood sugar still went down. We quickly gave him some sugar by vein and he at least opened his eyes and said he was hungry. He is still very sick, but at least he is through that crisis. Another prayer answered.

Kwashiorkor is very severe malnutrition in children, and if you add to it a diarrheal illness, it can be fatal, and it was this week in a two-year-old that came in to the hospital. We felt sad, but then we ended up with several more children with diarrheal illness this week. We prayed and did a lot of creative hard work with feeding kids through tubes in their noses into their stomachs and all the others survived. It is sad to see a death in a child, but it can be easily seen how this is the number one cause of death in children in developing countries. We can not measure blood salts and adjust our treatments according to this, as would be done in developed countries.

For news along the construction side of our hospital, roofing material has arrived and will hopefully be going up on one side of the new wing of the hospital. There is still another floor that has to be poured on the other side of the hospital and that will be going up. Walls inside the second floor have been going up and it is nice to see the private rooms. The chapel on the third floor where the roof will be going up soon has a beautiful view. There are windows all down the side of this chapel. Since our hospital overlooks a valley, as we are on the crest of a hill, the view from the chapel windows is magnificent. It is actually possible to visualize the place as it will be.

We hope to get more pictures, if we can get connected to the internet long enough to send them. In the meantime, enjoy the two with this e-mail.

Sincerely in Christ,

Nick, Phosfe, Christopher and Ian Walters

(1) A Foggy Day

(2) Gimbie Street Scene