|
| |
September, 2004
Dear friends,
 As
I write this update to you all, hurricane Ivan is on its way past our island and
about to make mincemeat of Jamaica. It has already done more damage to Granada
than Regan did a few years ago. Fortunately, we’re only getting rain. It’s
been coming down steadily since yesterday afternoon so I certainly hope it
doesn’t work the roads over too bad in the Prospere area before Monday. If it
quits soon we should be ok.
I restarted the clinic at Prospere on Monday August the 28th. I
felt the need to hold off for long enough to get resupplied with many of the
medicines that we were running short of. The picture is of the little group of
patients that greeted me that day. While I was away, Eden, our nurse had done a
great job keeping the clinic open for all our pregnant ladies, patients with
blood pressure problems, and those we give shots to for birth control. But, we
were in high spirits at seeing each other.
We’ve decided to change our third clinic day to Tuesday instead of
Wednesday. Our numbers on Wednesday haven’t been all that impressive and we
began to realize that it was probably due to the fact that the largest market
place in the region was also taking place on Wednesday. Market day is a very
important day in most peasant Haitian lives much like the farm market day used
to be important to the American farmer—important enough to keep people away from
the clinic anyway. We’ll see if that change makes any difference in our
numbers.
 One
of the patients that I saw this week was Dominique Jean Baptist, 18 years old.
He really didn’t look like he was very sick at first glance. But, when I
interviewed him, I found that he complained of a severe headache and an
occasional fever for the past five days. Besides this, Dominique had general
body pain, his eyes ached, and his fever would occasionally cause him to shiver
making him want to cover up with blankets while being in 90 degree heat. These
are all common symptoms of a person with malaria. I frequently see persons with
malaria at the clinic. Malaria is treated with three days of a medicine called
chloroquine and I usually also give Tylenol for the headache. Almost all of my
cases react very positively to this treatment. In most other countries of the
world, many of the strains of malaria are resistant to chloroquine. In those
countries you have to keep trying different medicines until you happen to hit on
the one that cures that particular strain of the disease. This is why malaria
is the disease that kills more people in the world every year than any other
disease. I’m thankful that in Haiti the chloroquine treatment is still
effective—a real blessing!
In His service to “the least of these,”
John
  
|
