A Day in a Field Hospital

Some candid shots of various departments in our hospital. Here Pastor Scott gets a crash course in being a medic! He was an OR orderly years ago and he pulled on that past life and made a great triage tech! Here Pastor Jude is acting as his interpreter and he fills our our makeshift triage form. By the end of the day he was prescribing basic medications with the rest of us! Nearly everyone who came through got Mabendazole as a worm treatment so that was a very common prescription.
I was doing the initial triage out on the portico. This got to be totally NUTS! As the day progressed the crowds got worse. Here you see the line waiting to talk to me. It was like winning the lottery: You win, you get to see the American Doctor, you lose (runny noses, backache, etc) you have to let the nurse check your vital signs and write you a prescription for vitamens and Paracetamol (Tylenol).
Soon the lines weren't content to sit on the sidelines - the gathered closer and closer in. They were always interested in the diagnosis of the other persons. We were continuously asking them to sit down! I got very claustrophobic at times because there were about 200 people gathered around my little table.
The waiting room is full and all the chairs are taken - here's a rock that looks mighty comfy... These people walked from many miles away.
Chelsea Dolan is crowd control indoors in the line to the pharmacy.

Filling prescriptions. The girl in the middle between Chelsea and Susan is the daughter of one of the local doctors and she was an invaluable help! Only 10 years old, but with great English speaking skills, she interpreted tirelessly for two days and helped our pharmacist people fill medications. We all fell in love with her and want to bring her home with us, but she is much loved by her parents and we have to leave her here! She called us all "auntie" as a sign of respect. (except Chelsea - she was "sister" - I guess she was too young to be "auntie"!)
And the crowd grows!
The OR at the beginning of the day. Note the open doors on the other side of the table and all the supplies that we brought from America are in bins on the floor - all of you who know sterile technique can cringe - we did!

At the end of the week we have seen approx 987 patients in four days - 547 of those on Friday alone! Hard to believe, huh? But with God's help we REALLY did see that many patients. We lost count of the surgeries we performed, but hopefully we are leaving this area with many people some better for our having been here.